Fantaësie Gothaëca
by Let-There-Be-Rain
Summary: In a world where the sun has been replaced by an artificial creation of stupendous beauty, the tale of an Orphan. If you love gothic and gore, then you'll love it. I hope...
1. Shaede

Fantaësie Gothaëca

Part I—Childhood

Chapter I—Shaede

They say that once, long ago in the noble days of yore, the sun existed. It didn't, of course, but the mule-minded storytellers who told of fantastic colourful tales of the bygone days would not be caught _dead_ saying the sun always was but a myth. Glade, my storyteller, and I spent hours on end every day arguing a possible sun's existence. He maintained with an obstinacy born of stupidity that it _did_ exist:

'My father told me that his father told him that his father—my father's grandfather and my great-grandfather: had actually lived at the time of the sun. And he had hair like flames and a skin like empire-amber,' Glade said.

'Your father was a storyteller just like you! Of course he was bound to make up those kind of stories!' I'd retort, truthfully.

'It's not because our business is in fiction that we live our whole lives in fiction!' Glade then snapped, glaring at me through strands of coarse, peasantly hair.

'Maybe you are just so immersed in your fiction during your storytelling time that you can't make the difference when the real time is here!'

I was magnificently adamant. In my eyes, the sun never existed, so Glade might as well have tried to persuade the stone wall that surrounded Shaede to turn overnight into strawberry-flavoured chocolate.

My main reason for disbelieving so stubbornly in something so quite implausible was that I held this object, the _sun_, in utter disdain. Born a Shaeder, in the black and white world that was the Broken Glass Factory, nothing in my eyes could equal Sataerylm: this orb carved in the finest, strongest metals by the most talented of our artisans, designed by the Mage Ekt himself, filled with the everlasting flames that were born of all the deceased souls of our ancestors, the coiling iron arabesques of its beautiful made filled in thousands of shards of glass that had been tainted every colour of the spectrum; Sataerylm rotated round our world on a basis that was sometimes regular as a clock for a few months and then totally ragged, coming and going with seemingly no logical rhythm around the four Seasons: the huge, finely carved iron rings that formed the subtle network of Sataerylm's roads around the Broken Glass Factory.

Most of my childhood days had been filled with the eager hope of seeing what I called with an arrogance born of every child's invincible pride 'my Sataerylm.' And then, when it finally arrived, it was as though its bright light filled my heart to the brim with feelings born from it's varying and stupendously beautiful colours: _exempli gratia_, the vaporous blue brought out all my dreaminess: I walked in mists of blue and thought of imaginary lands and seas and creatures and feelings. Lands wherein pale cobalt grass grew from bluish white stone and tasted of soft sweetness…Seas where azure and indigo crashed in fierce embraces before parting with tears of foamy white lace…Creatures with milky skins and seeing sapphires instead of eyes and voices like the pure notes of crystal shattering against a glass floor…and feelings of sweetness, of softness, of beauty, whisper-fine satiny dreams, cool cloud-cream sighs of love…

My blue-hearted days would last as long as the blue side of Sataerylm shone over Shaede, tainting its twisted slate roofs dreamy blue like the faery castles from coloured storybooks, turning the dull cobbles of its narrow streets to pavements of strewn ethereal moonstones and colouring every Cathaedral's so-called virginal white banners to trailing cascades of azure.

During those beautiful days, if I wasn't daydreaming, or singing softly to the wind or picking up frail flowers, or dancing vaguely in the rippling grass of Eavan, I was talking to infants, pickings up wounded animals and nursing them back to life, visiting hospitals, filled with a need to help and love and draw blankets of dreams and sweetness over other people.

And then Sataerylm abandoned me, and came back a few days or weeks or months later, and she would have turned upon me the green side of her heart.

Glaucous green. My sugar-sweet silky daydreams faded inside my treacherous child's box of memories, and the misshapen monster of mystery took its place inside my body. I roved, then. I climbed up stairs, I broke into houses through half-open windows, I opened drawers, I read hidden letters under loose floorboards. I went on climbing narrow and rickety stairs, I reached tenebrous, dusty, beautifully cob-webbed attics. I drank the bittersweet liquor I found in the bizarrely-shaped green bottles, I vomited copiously in the dust and antique wooden chests, laughed lazily and giddily made my way up on the twisted, steep roofs. I teetered my way from roof to roof, occasionally making a green-tinted tile slip from under me and crash down fifty meters down below on the pavement or even, occasionally, and most unfortunately I'm sure, on someone's head. I explored the celestial universe of Rooftops, and then once gazed into the sky and reckoned it was so wide, and strange, and raggedy, and ugly, and beautiful I should try to explore its mysteries too. I stole a genius's plan in a towering medicine-scented university, I killed hundreds of birds with a beautiful, immense crossbow I filched to steal their glossy ripped feathers, I dived into rubbish-pits to find air-metal rods and screws and bolts among the waves of rejects and wastes and built wings. I took my remarkable inventions up to the tallest roof I could find, slipped on my makeshift wings and flew off into the sky. It told me it didn't want me (yet, at least) and hurled me back to my world. I fell down on to the top of a house, and rebounded from roof to roof down to the ground. I broke my leg twice, my arms, three ribs, a finger and two toes. This incident gave me an insight into a domain I had never consider existed: the one of pain.

Under Sataerylm's glaucous emerald gaze, I set off on a quest I had set to myself: I would be, I announced to myself, the first cartographer of pain. They were many and eternally varying ways to feel pain. I carefully tried and charted the twisted routes and roads, the soaring mountains and peaks, the trickling rivers and terrifying towns. I cut myself; I threw myself down stairs, rooftops, windows. I banged my head against walls, against stones, against iron lampposts, against fences and trees. I pushed pens and spikes and knives and forks and razors and broken shards of glass and even shimmering glamorous mirrors into my flesh. Before I reached the age of thirteen I was a broken doll: my left eye was mostly blind, I could not use the three right-side fingers of my right hand, my left wrist worked only through a metal machine they'd set inside it, my right leg was shorter than my left, I was missing two toes, and the rest of my body was covered in bruises, scars and stitches.

When I'd finished exploring houses, rooftops, the sky and pain, I descended to the underground universe of cellars, secret rooms and passageways and catacombs. I loved those. I loved the perfume of must, because it so reminded me of the colour green, I loved the moss creeping on the carved iron pillars and crumbling ceilings, I loved flipping through scrolls in hidden underground studies, I loved reading the inscriptions on the stone tombs, then opening them and acting out scenes between skeletons, whom I also loved. I especially enjoyed sleeping in velvet-lined coffins on silk pillows that smelled of sweet sickening saccharine death. Loved working out the mechanisms in the abandoned, ancient trains in the labyrinth of train-routes that stretched out its metal-skeletons-scattered net under the whole world. I grew weary with hidden chambers, the dead and the rusty mechanics, and moved on to abandoned mines. I collected shards of gems and minerals of every colours imaginable, though under Sataerylm's green eye they all seemed strangely mysterious and anonymous.

My curiosity of places high and low satisfied, I turned to the earnest study of the living organisms: I killed animals, slit them opened then studied and mapped their insides. Charted and looked up their organs and bones. I mixed mechanics up with the whole process and launched into the creation of half-living half-robot hybrids. I got together a superb collection of those creatures, named them and treated them like my children, siblings, lovers or slaves depending on my mood and my satisfaction on their behaviour.

Animals and places covered, I turned to the fascinating universe of plants. I gave my self the conqueror's title of Botanist, and became Emperor of Eaven, Shaede's immense natural park: a splatter-shaped world-sized garden divided into two sections: the passionately-cared-for half and the entirely wild and neglected half. The latter was my favourite, because I loved its disorganized beauty, which made me think of an orchestra whereat every musician would play a different tune of their instrument, forming a sort of senseless, magnificently illogical melody. The other half did have its attractions, of course: its flowers were the glossiest and most beautiful, its trees the biggest, its plants the healthiest, and it permitted you to get lost, or pretend to—though to my eyes pretending to get lost was missing the whole point of really getting lost, thus missing the pleasure of it.

The whole of Eaven stood underneath an immense glass dome, the inside and outside of which were crissocrossing networks of cables and strings hanging bulbs of varying colours and shades, and little boxes which sprayed chemicals and gazes into the gardens to keep it alive. In my head the question once came up like a demented mermaid emerging from a stormy bottle-green sea: what would happen if someone broke the glass dome? But my respect for the life of nature could not be shaken, even by my wildest, most feral fantasies.

In my botanist's days, I haunted the gardeners. I filled in scrapbooks with sketches and information. I spent evenings planning raids on the different sections of Eaven, stealing flowers and plants and seeds, which I brought home and watched die with terrible depressing desolation, before starting off again.

On the wild side of Eaven, I camped and planned expeditions, lost my way for days on end before emerging half-starved and very often ill from some poisonous fruit I'd attempted eating. I added up my books of drawings, experiences and plant information to my collections of robot-animals, gems and minerals, bones and bruises; then, assured that I was the best in the domain I started looking for something else.

My explorations and restless thirst for discoveries only lasted during the green-lit days of Sataerylm's emerald side, and therefore all my discoveries were stretched between long periods of times when I sought and found out nothing because Sataerylm's light would have changed. To blue, or to red.

Red was probably the one which made me the most frightening. It shed upon the world a sheet of demonic crimson, which threw me into fits of anger, morbid passions and bloodlust. My favourite drink no longer sweet milk and nectars or dizzying wines and poisons, but blood. I loved the taste of blood. Like rust in my mouth, half sweet and half bitter and so very rich! It was like drinking a beautiful, passionate song, it was like drinking danger, it was like drinking gold. On countless times I bit the inside of my cheeks to feel the vague rusty taste in my mouth. Sometimes it was enough, but other times I felt a terrible longing to actually have it fill the whole of my mouth, and then pour down my throat. I cut myself and drank like an alcoholic. Once, during one of my pain-exploring sessions, I'd slit open my cheek from the left corner of my lips down to my jaw, giving myself an eerie, dizzyingly wide clown's smile. They drugged me to stop feeling the pain and then spent six consecutive hours linking back nerves and muscles and veins together, before sewing it up to where my lips normally joined: but Sataerylm's ruby glare came at that time and my bloodlust returned, so I kept feeling the stitches with my tongue, tugging them loose and chewing on them, eventually pulling them all off one by one. They reprimanded me, used a special scarring cream, sewed it up again, shut my mouth with leather and metal for five months, but I started again. Eventually, Sataerylm went away, and when she came back she was blue, so I left my cheek heal in a fit of love and generosity: though the wound closed up eventually, I was left constantly disfigured, a huge scar on my cheek, and nearly the whole of the left side of my face paralyzed.

Else than the consuming bloodlust, red brought a passion which I felt to tormenting pain. Passions on and about everything and anything. I killed a bird in a frightening passion of devouring, crippling jealousy for its gift of flight, and then sobbed hours on end over the dead broken corpse in painful frenzies of remorse and sorrow. Anger took terrifying proportions: one day I was playing in a street with Crae, a half-mechanic bird of my inventions whom I then loved with a limitless, lost love. It had pale blue feathers which under Sataerylm's red Cyclops's look turned into violet, with little luminous white eyes and its natural voice. I taught it to sing my favourite tunes, and never parted company from him. And then that day, as I walked through Appleside's marketplace with Crae, my little singing bird was snatched from my shoulder. I whipped around and felt my heart's rhythm accelerate, every beat knocking into the next one inside my bandaged chest. A boy a few years older than me, tall and thin with gangly limbs and long hair, dressed in rich ragged clothes with a red scarf tied around the collar of his white shirt and a golden watch hanging from the pocket of his embroidered waistcoat, was holding Crae in his fist, grinning at me.

'Who's the little singing fellow then?'

'Give him back!' I snarled.

He opened his palm and took one of Crae's wings in his hand. He tugged:

'You going to weep over the weenie fellow, pretty damsel?' he jeered.

He ripped the wing off. Crae let out a pitiful wail of pain.

'En't there some bonnier fellow around than this little beastie, dams—'

He never got to finish his sentence. I sent my fist crashing in his face, the momentum multiplied by my irrationally intense hatred. I broke a finger and half ripped-off his jaw. He screeched and fell on the stone cobbles, blood pouring from his mouth and face. I picked Crae up and ran, crying passionate tears of anger and hatred and pity.

Else than my anger, the other feeling that the crimson duplicated out of measure in me was love. And I set my cap at the storyteller Glade.

Author's Comment

Right. I am currently re-writing all the chapters I've already put up, erasing all my spelling mistakes and smoothing stuff over. It also is a clever ruse to get my story to go back up on top of the list see what I've been reduced to do? Well, anyway. As I already said, the whole Part I is basically nothing more than an introduction—it just sets the place and heroin and throws in some characters that may or may not be seen later. The first part isn't really important to the plot as a whole, it's basically simply background info on the world of the Broken Glass Factory and our protagonist. Enjoy and please please please point out any mistake, spelling or other wise, and any stuff you feel I should change or add. I am open to critics, suggestions and questions. (See how desperate I am actually getting? XD)


	2. Glade

Fantaësie Gothaëca

I—Shaede

Chapter II—Glade

Glade was very old. He was forty something, probably, so he should die in a few years, but I hardly minded. I listened to his tales for hours on end, I argued with him, claimed him as mine, and often poured my heart out at him. I loved him with the love of a child: an abandoned, eternal, exaggerate and grand love. I followed him around faithfully, promised that I should never cease loving him as long as my heart shall beat in my chest, kissed him fiercely on the spiky stubbles of his jaw, and then contradicted his every word, argued with him on everything and kicked his legs in fury. I showed him my mechanic animals, taught him their names, gave some of them to him as token of my love and swore that when he would die I would drink poison and rejoin him in his grave. He laughed at me, ruffled my hair and said:

'Dame! By the time I'll die, you'll be too busy mooning over a handsome youth your age to even attend my flimsy funerals.'

To which I broke into great choking angry sobs, screamed at him, punched him repeatedly in the face and vowed that he would be proven wrong—sealing my vow with blood I wiped on a silk handkerchief and ordered him to wear every moment of the day till death would make him unable to.

Glade had rough dark hair, short at the back and long at the front so that it framed his face and often covered half of it. His eyebrows were like two thick, curved black lines over his eyes, which were dark too, though most of the time half-hidden beneath eyelids that tended to droop as though from lack of sleep or interest. His chin was round and most of the time covered in black stubble, which hurt my lips and cheeks when I kissed him, but most of the time I didn't mind. One day I did mind it: irrationally irritated, I went to fetch a razor, sharpened the blade on a stone and told Glade:

'I'm going to shave you. I can't kiss you when it feels like you have needles coming out of your skin.'

Glade laughed at me. He was sitting at the bureau of his hotel chamber, scribbling down scraps and bits of stories for this night's storytelling session. He was dressed in his stiff-collared shirt, a pale blue silk scarf loose around the neck, his faithful, plain old waistcoat and used, travel-worn breeches and boots. His jacket, which I loved and personally coveted as my share in his inheritance will, was hanging from the open wardrobe door, dark and stiff and clean with the complicated embroidered gold patterns at the sleeves and collars and the carved golden buttons which I often found myself fingering with envy.

The precious jacket out of the way, I allowed myself to attack him. I pressed the cold blade to his rough cheek to make him freeze and hold still, and then said:

'I'm not jesting! I _am_ going to shave you.'

'I don't think that's a very good idea…' he said, frowning at me.

'Glade…' his lack of faith in me and my love desolated me more than I could ever describe, 'don't you trust me?'

'Of course I trust you! It's the razorblade I don't trust. And even though I've only got a few years to live left, I still would rather die later.'

'I'm not going to kill you,' I said, my voice a dazzling expression of reassurance and rationality, 'I'm simply going to cut down the evil from the root.'

He eventually let me get my way. A few minutes later he was being carried away by Lifesavers, his white shirt soaked with blood and leaving a long trail of crimson behind him. He stayed in hospital for two weeks, because of his loss of blood and the slowly healing cut. These two weeks I spent living on the edge of myself; held in the iron claws of a fear that gripped me day and night and would not allow me a second of peace: the tormenting thought that he might die any hour because of me. I told the Lifesavers that I'd pay any amount of money to have him healed, no matter how high. I would steal, I would _kill_ to get the money just so I could get to see Glade alive a few more years, but the Lifesaver I talked to, a tired looking woman with a stained white blouse over her worn grey gown and a butterfly-shaped brooch at her breast, told me with a faint smile:

'He doesn't need money, child—he needs blood.'

I happily gave some of mine, and he eventually healed. I felt superb; I felt like a hero, I considered myself noble to epic proportions for this act of giving. I decided I wanted to be a Lifesaver when I'd grow up, (of course, I changed my mind a week later,) but the good thing about it all was that I learned to love Glade even through such despicable aspects of him as his stubble.

Artist's Comment

Yeah, I know this is despicably short, but the thing is, since I had to cut everything into smaller pieces, I have to chose them for a reason, so I picked them by subject. Glade is sort of scattered in everything, but that's the only part when it's actually more or less only him and her thoughts of him.

Yes! I admit it! I admit everything! I based his physical description entirely on a picture I have of Ian Watkins I have randomly on my computer…He just looked so cool, and the way he was dressed was exactly how I wanted Glade (which, by the way, is short of Gladiator) to be, so I just decided to base the whole of him on this picture of Ian Watkins…:blush:


	3. Salaesha

Fantaësie Gothaëca

I—Shaede

Chapter III—Salaesha

Still—Glade remained a mostly minor part of my life, no matter what I might say about supposedly 'living only for the light from his eyes.' Sataerylm and the strange mood it induced in me would always entirely rule my life. Of all its lights, green would always remain my favourite, though my most beloved was orange.

When bright orange coloured up the walls and streets of Shaede with hues of glee and cheer, merchants hoisted their tents, feasts and carnivals happened on daily basis and a constant shout of laughter seemed to float in the air. I was entirely, and absolutely sanely, happy during the orange days. I did not mind my skirts, simply gathered them up at my hips, gathered my hair in a knot, wrapped myself in a mantle and roved around the town, past superb stands of beautiful and useless objects of pale porcelains and fine metals, darting past my favourite of all stands: the little table on which a pyramid of the shiniest, glossiest, most beautiful apples I had ever seen stood like a pile of jewels in my mind. I had stolen countless of them, though every time I did it, I felt guilty: the merchant who sold them, Tahaeman Forrae, was a kindly, good-humoured young man. He must have been around his very early twenties, or maybe even late teens: his face was sharp and thin and full of youth, his eyes wide under the pale floating strands of his spider-silk fine hair. He wore plain though neat clothes, unlike most young men who followed the repulsive 'rich rags' fashion, and spent his time polishing his apples against constantly spotless handkerchiefs. I enjoyed talking to him because he never showed any of the contempt I got from other adults, or even adolescents: he was always polite and respectful and even slightly affectionate towards me. I tagged him as 'Friend' and sealed this friendship by giving him Syrayn, an imposing black dog I had killed and then brought back to life with the help of a clever machinery that not only gave him a near human intelligence, but also a voice. I told Forrae that Syrayn would always guard his apple stand against enemies and thieves, though I omitted to add that I myself could not be detected as a thief by Forrae because I was stored in his database as a friend…

For no matter how much I loved Forrae, I loved his apples better. Their skin was tough and acid, and the flesh inside was firm and so sweet it felt like eating joy made flesh. But what I loved most about those apples was the gloss, the luxurious, lush polish of their skin. Every time I stole one of them, I spent half an hour staring at it, eating and drinking it with my eyes before finally allowing myself to succumb to the sweet temptation and biting into the beloved fruit.

When I wasn't looking at the strange foreign objects brought by the traders or stealing food, I enjoyed watching the theatre-stands, were troupes acted out comedies or dramas, or performed delightful acrobatics, sang stories, or played wonderful magic tricks. I once attempted to get myself enrolled in _The Walking Moonlight_, a troupe of artists that were as talented at acting as they were at performing circus tricks. They laughed at me, threw me a coin of gold and sauntered away in twirls of bright floating materials. Mortally offended, I picked up the coin, threw it in the direction of their departing backs, waited till they all had disappeared around the street corner and rushed to pick it up again, ashamed of myself yet unable to resist the gleaming lure of gold.

Once, another troupe had arrived in Shaede. They were _The Travelling Orphans of Dawn_, a title I thought was as pompous as it was unoriginal and stupid, and though they were few, the little performers they had performed very well. One of them was a woman: she had the longest, glossiest, most beautiful hair I had ever seen in my whole entire life. I normally never concerned myself much with appearances, in my eyes, a beautiful person held the same status as an ugly person: but this woman's hair had succeeded in making me actually admire it. She had a face like the blade of a knife: long and sharp, with narrow eyes and a small round mouth and a small nose and eyebrows that looked as though a painter had traced two up-tilted lines of black ink with his thinnest paintbrush over her eyes. She never wore skirts but breeches and knee-high boots, both fastened tightly with a dozen buckles around her calves and thighs. She also didn't wear a corset, but instead she had a long tunic of soft worn cloth, with several large belts buckled at her right side to enclose and flatten her chest, and long sleeves over which she wore the thing I loved the best of her attire; her gloves, which were fit for an Engineer's daughter: of a soft, luxurious leather and richly embroidered with coiling patterns and thorny roses. On the knuckles were little metal nails that could duplicate any bruise a punch could have given to fantastic proportions. Finally, she always had her monstrously huge sword at her hip and round her waist a special belt that could hold up to twenty daggers. Her name was Salaesha, and she was _The Travelling Orphans of Dawn'_s Dagger-mistress.

Whenever I could I would spend long periods of time watching her train for her tricks with her trick-companion, who was a child not only younger than me but also, in my opinion, much less intelligent and talented. She was called, though, as I'm sure anyone would agree, nobody really cares about either her or her name, which was, nonetheless, Floe. A crude name for a crude little girl, for crude she was: she wore crude clothes and coiffed her hair crudely and smiled and talked with equal crudity. I often wished something would go wrong with the dagger trick and Floe's crude little face would be torn into two by one of Madam Salaesha's beautiful quick daggers.

One day after a training session, I gathered my mantle round me, lifted my scarf over my face and went to see the Dagger Mistress as she combed her long satin-fine, polished hair over her shoulder, standing in her little tattered scarlet tent in front of a small dressing table on which a myriad of little bottles and boxes piled around a large cracked oval mirror. A pile of cushions lay in one corner, covered with rugs and several patchwork duvets; the rest of the tent was filled with wooden chests containing waves of rich and exotic-looking materials, strange objects and there even was a casket full of jewellery standing beside a high narrow box in which were stored several swords and sabres, a bow, some broken arrows, two walking sticks and a patched-up leather quiver.

W hen I entered her tent, looking around in wide eyed admiration and envy, Madam Salaesha turned around sharply, pushing some of this glossy rich hair out of her blade-sharp face.

'Are you seeking something, child?' she asked in her voice which was signer's voice: deep and melodious and rich as her hair.

'You,' I replied, squeaking slightly, and ashamed of myself.

'Why are you masking your face? Are you afraid I might betray your presence here to somebody?'

'I'm not afraid of anything,' I tossed at her, suddenly much more courageous.

'Then lower your hood and scarf. It seems like a cowardly thing to speak to someone with a veiled face.'

Sighing, I lowered the offending garments, and stared in mingled pride and discomfort as her eyes widened.

'I understand,' she uttered simply.

I shrugged, looked around briefly, and said:

'I think your apprentice is an idiot. You ought to give her the boot and have me instead.'

'You want me to dismiss Floe and have you instead?' Salaesha said, smiling and fixing her narrow eyes on me.

'I do,' I confirmed determinedly.

'You want me to replace a beautiful young assistant for a mangled-faced girl who looks like a boy in skirts.'

I took the blow steadily enough: as I said, I wasn't concerned very much for beauty, and not only was I used to repulsing people, but I also took much pride in it.

'Yes,' I said, confidently.

'You are a queer child. Come forth.'

I advanced cautiously towards her.

When I stood right in front of her, she raised her gloved hands to my shoulders, and turned me around. Then I felt her loosen the knot in my hair and spread the ragged mass on my back. She turned me back towards her, swept my hair on one side, and began to apply pastes and powders form her little phials, bottles and boxes all over my face. When she finished, she turned to her mirror and said:

'Look.'

I looked. The face that the cracked smooth surface first reflected back at me was a doll's face: pale silky porcelain skin, pink cheeks, carmine lips, black-lined eyes, pale shimmering blue eyelids and fallen cascade of ragged silky hair.

As I looked on, I saw the angry thick dark line across my cheek, visible under the pale face-powder. I saw the tarnished, dull left eye, different in size and colour from the right, noticeable even with the black kohl. I saw the long scar running down my jaw. And most obvious of all: the lopsided, twisted smile: like a monstrous clown's made-up mouth on my pale monstrous face.

'How do you look?' Salaesha demanded.

'Hideous,' I retorted sincerely and with more than a little bit of pride.

'The products I used on you are the very best you could ever find in the Broken Glass Factory, no matter how hard you looked. I could make even the most monstrous leper look like an angel. But you—you're beyond me.'

'Thank you!' I said, blushing at the compliment.

'You are monstrous with a monstrosity that should never be seen on a child, no matter how mentally sick or emotionally ill.'

'Thank you!' I reiterated happily.

'You inflicted those wounds upon yourself, did you not?'

I nodded.

'Why?' she asked, as she reached for a cotton cloth, dabbed some colourless liquid onto it and started running it over my face.

'I'm the entire universe's first ever Cartographer of Pain,' I told her grandly.

'What is your name?'

'I shan't tell you. You'd talk to my guardians and they'd stop me from doing whatever I want!' I declared.

'With a face like yours, your mere description would send me to your dwelling place in less time than required to speak it,' Salaesha said gently.

I shrugged arrogantly.

'You can try,' I said, with sumptuous smugness.

She stared at me silently for a while, digging her narrow eyes inside mine, and then sighed, and said:

'So: you think you'd do better than Floe as my assistant do you?'

'I do!'

'And why is that, may I ask?'

'Floe may have the looks, but she hasn't got any talent. Whereas I may be ugly, but at least I am talented.'

'How very confident you are for a child. Would you care to prove it?'

'Of course! Tell me to do anything and I shall do it!' I exclaimed, casting off my thick mantel and raising my long lacy sleeves up in a bundle in the crooks of my skinny bruises elbows.

'Very well. Your skirts will encumber you—'

'I don't care.'

'Then try a back-flip.'

I stepped forth, flung myself backwards, arms stiff and thrust to the floor, and accomplished a successful, if not very graceful, back-flip.

'Well?' I gasped, pushing handfuls of my hateful hair out of my face.

'Ungraceful. Heavy. Clumsy. Not very impressive, though I guess the hair and garment must have been against you.'

'They were!' I confirmed ardently.

She made me do a few other tricks, even launched a few daggers in my direction, made me sing for a bit and execute a few dance steps. Eventually, she let me sink to the floor in a pile of panting and gasping materials, hair and scarlet skin.

'You have no talent whatsoever that I could use in any of my tricks.'

I shivered under the hard blow but did not speak.

'However, if you really want to join us, you should talk to Chalk. You might interest him.'

'But I don't want to work with…whatever his name is, Chalk—I want to work with you!' I cried out.

'You can't. Take your 'no' with grace and withdraw, child.'

I nodded, took my 'no' with great dignity and walked out.

I did not go and see Chalk. Doing it would have been admitting I wasn't good as a Dagger Mistress's assistant, and this I denied with my whole mind and being.

Artist's Comment

I know all those characters I'm introducing all seem completely useless, but when you look at it properly, they all help me build an image of the heroin. I'd like to know what you think of her, and that includes personal opinion: do you love her, hate her, despise her, are disgusted by her…what? C'mon! I need reviews and back-up comments to see what I need to change and whether I'm getting the reaction I need! Please…?


	4. Rottle

Fantaësie Gothaëca

I—Shaede

Chapter IV—Rottle

My passion in the art, however, waned eventually, like every other passion: a crimson Sataerylm came and launched me into a glorious mental bloodbath. When the orange side of my beloved Sataerylm came back, it brought with it a certain merchant and his son. They were coming from the innermost north side of the Broken Glass Factory. Clad in tough, soft-worn leather and ragged furs, with long, wild pale hair around their bright-eyed faces, they brought with them merchandise that sent me into trances of wonder. The man was called Rottle Fyra, he was my favourite of the two: tall, strong and tough, he had a voice like a roar in a deep ice-cave. It was awesome. When he shouted, it sounded like the world was collapsing around me—when he sang it was like a thousand men were singing in perfect synchronization. He treated me with the malevolent kindness and merciless earnest of a father: the first time he caught me stealing from his stand, he gave me a cuff that sent me slamming into the stand facing his across the street. After that, I never stole again (from him that is) but liked to visit him, because he enjoyed telling me about his travels, and he carved the most beautiful ivory figures I'd ever seen. He had one that he kept with him at all times: it was hand sized and superbly delicate, a woman standing, stretching and yawning, with a cascade of silky hair around her and a loose robe draped around her lithe body. Her mouth was stretched into an enchanting smile and her eyes were two tiny dots of incrusted jets.

'Taylee was the most beautiful woman in the world,' Rottle told me, caressing the figure's silky hair with his thumb, 'and the bravest. I met her when she rescued me from wild bears in a rise back up in the north when I was still a dashing fellow. She saved my life, you know. She had this great crossbow, and her hair was like a veil of satin in the wind. She grinned at me, this bright grin you see on the carving, shot the bears down and then helped me up back to my feet. She told me her name, said she was a Cartographer. She camped with me, and we never separated from there. Little girl,' he said, looking up at me and taking my chin in his hand, 'let me tell you something. Never fall in love with a man until he saves your life, or you save his. It creates such a huge bound of friendship and love you'll never part till the end of your life. Beautiful.'

He tucked my hair behind my ears, patted my cheek and then resumed his story.

'So we stayed together for years. She bore this terrible fellow, the one you can always see sulking around the stand—our dear son. And then, one day…'

He sighed, looked at the smiling carved Taylee in his hand and went on, his voice shivering slightly:

'We were crossing a mountain. One of the last ones, you know. Taller than the tallest rise you could ever find in the BGF. A beautiful monster. She fell down a ravine. I'd have rejoined her—life's dreary and sad without my own smiling Taylee, but in the sledge there was the little Farano, weeping a little bit, and I thought: should I go down and take our child with us, or should I honour her gift of life by caring for it well?'

He smiled at me, a brave, half-tearful smile.

'I decided to go back to the sledge and take Farano somewhere he could grow up safe and well. Then, when he was ten, he decided to come back on the roads with me…'

We both looked towards where Farano was standing, leaning against one of the stand's pillars, arms crossed over his velvet-clad torso and head bent down so that his wild silky hair came down to hide most of it. He was dressed in rich clothes, precious and warm materials. His boots were of leather lined with dark fur, his breeches straight and patched at some points with pads of leather, he had a beautiful, well-worked embroidered waistcoat over his delicate shirt, with a carefully tailored velvet jacket over it and finally a huge overcoat, open at the front, hanging down to his calves, a deep hood dropped in his back. He had nimble hands which he normally hid in leather gloves, but when he worked the tiny mechanical devices his father sold, he would always take them off, and the graceful, lightning-quick rapidity of every single one of his movements would never fail to enthral me. Otherwise, I did not care overly for the young man: I found him cold, aloof, exaggeratedly sulky and a snob. He had nothing of his father's eloquence and magnanimousness, and he always treated me like some sort of idiotic infant.

'I think—' I one day told his father in a secretive murmur, 'that you should get rid of your son. Throw him down some ditch or…or…accuse him of stealing one of your things and get him hanged.'

'What—don't you like Farano?' Rottle asked in surprise, looking up from the piece of marble he was shaping.

'I loathe him,' I said in a profoundly heartfelt way.

'Don't you think he is a handsome fellow?'

'No! Well, yes. But this hardly counts. I mean, I know a girl who is very pretty but who is so crude it makes you feel sick simply to talk to her or even see her move!'

'Farano isn't crude! His manners are quite polished,' and then, to my greatest horror, he betrayed me, and cried at his passing son: 'Farano my boy! Come over here!'

Farano dragged his way to us, and as I sprang up to make a hasty exit, Rottle grabbed me by the hand and jerked me back down to my box-sit beside him

'This young lady thinks your manners lack a certain polish,' the treacherous man announced merrily.

Farano raised his eyebrows, looking genuinely surprised.

'Does she? Do you?' he asked, looking down on me through his hateful lank hair.

'This is not what I said!' I protested, (which was perfectly true), but Rottle cut me short.

'She reckons I should throw you down some ditch or make you hang.'

'Does she? Do you?' the boy parroted.

'Well, not really in this—' I started, but once again, Rottle went ahead of me.

'She tells me with a startling passion that she loathes you.'

'How strange!' Farano nodded, looking at me like doctors look at strange symptoms, 'And what excites in you such hostile feelings, little child?'

'I'm not little! I'm twelve!' I protested ardently, 'and…I…well, your father exaggerated a lot of what I _actually_ said!'

'And what did you actually say?' Farano demanded, a shadow of a smile beginning to light his serious face.

'That…that I…that you…' I struggled hopelessly, thinking that natures and animals and rooftops were very easy things to manage, as compared to humans.

'Come now—you two just make it up and kiss and be friends!' Rottle said happily, slapping each of our backs.

I drew back from Farano, the box falling back behind my knees, hitching my scarf higher upon my face and clasping my hood tighter under my chin.

Farano, however, pursed his pale thin lips and shut his eyes and stretched out his face towards mine. I administered it a very healthy cuff and stood back in indignant wide-eyed silence.

'Now, now,' Rottle said, laughing as he watched his son rub a flushed cheek with a gloved hand, 'nothing at all called this extreme behaviour!' he stepped towards me, and pushed down my hood.

I glared at him.

'Such a pretty little face. A bit damaged, maybe, a bit frightening, even, but pretty nonetheless!'

Farano nodded with an unbearably sage and agreeable air.

'I'm not pretty!' I cried out, insulted, 'I'm actually the ugliest person that lives in Shaede.'

I declined my title with an air of arrogance that somehow seemed to be a source of mirth for my two companions. They both burst out laughing, Rottle loudly and like a dog's joyous bark, and Farano in a youthful, light voice that seemed to tinkle down like a stream of water. I looked daggers at them, and them, gathering my cloak around me in as dignified a way as I could muster, I began to walk away.

'What a spirited young lady…' Rottle coughed and hiccupped behind my back.

Artist's Comment

Ditto as before. Can't be bothered to write more right now.


	5. Earthenstar

Fantaësie Gothaëca

I—Shaede

Chapter V—Earthenstar

My childhood, as it was, was a very busy and interesting period. However, they were those terrible phases when life was dull and uninteresting and tedious. These days were my days without Sataerylm, when the Broken Glass Factory was lit by the horrible bright white lights of lamps and bulbs, and my loathing of the picture it painted in this city Sataerylm could make so beautiful forced me to stay at what I called with innate scorn 'home.'

Born in the ostentatious and much-envied caste of Orphan, I had been raised by two masked tutors that I saw so rarely my knowledge of them stopped at there name, and that was mainly all. Lord Sulphur and his wife, Alcha, lived in the South-Eastern wing of Earthenstar, the star-shaped manor which rose in beautiful moss and rust-covered stone and iron turrets. I lived on the Northern wing (a fact of which I was most proud: for me, the north was the mountains and the bears and the ice-witches and the dangerous beautiful Alchematoriae) The remaining wings, except the South one which was the entrance hall and the ballroom and main hall etc, were occupied by five other Orphans: On the North-West was Flaeme, my favourite one: she was three years older then me, a poet with long curly hair. She loved to write with long curly quills and in green ink for some reason, and she even wrote a poem for me one day.

'You know,' she said, 'people look at you and they see a frightening little girl with a mangled face. I look at you and I see a half-mechanic demon haunted by an angel from the palace of clouds.'

I nodded, not sure it was really a compliment, but taking it as such nonetheless.

When she reached the age of sixteen, Sulphur and Alcha said she was to be married. They organized a ball for her, though I was not to attend it, being to young at the age of thirteen. I also believe that my tutors feared I might misbehaved, which I very much wanted to do. It seemed to me that Flaeme was very much in need of saving: if she let herself fall into the trap set for her and marry a lord and become fat and ugly like other ladies, she'd just die of it! Poets are supposed to be ethereal and airy and unmarried. Or so I thought, but Flaeme told me, one night she snuck into my bedroom and settled against the carved wooden board at the feet of my bed, a pillow pressed against the lace that foamed at her throat:

'I can't _wait_ till I get marry…' she whispered ardently, her eyes bright in the flickering light cast by the black-berry scented candle on my bedside table.

'You can't wait? I thought poets never got married!' I exclaimed, looking up from the immense scrapbook on which I'd been tinkering with the details of my plants pictures.

'Of _course_ they do!' Flaeme protested, laughing a little bit, 'I shall meet a man with hair in a wave of glossy curls on his shoulders, and a smile that shall chase _all_ shadows from my heart like water chases fire away from a burning house.'

I laughed at this brilliant joke, then realised it wasn't meant as a joke and my laughter died in my throat.

'Are you serious? Or simply trying to divert me with your most amusing stock of banters?'

'I am being _mortally_ serious!'

I felt betrayed.

'I want to be held against a beating heart, to be embraced in the solace of strong arms…to…to…'

I sank underneath my covers, buried my head in my pillows and muttered:

'I had an exhausting day…'

She went on blabbering nonetheless, and I fell asleep to the hum of her constant and passionate speech.

The Orphan who occupied the Eastern wing was a boy my age, maybe a few months younger, I don't know. He was called Etherion, had a marble statue's perfect face, eyes like a baby's (babyish and blue) and he was thief. I suspect he raided every other wing but his own on a regular basis, and mine in particular. I fancied many of my books and animals had disappeared in the most mysterious circumstances. Though I never actually went in his apartments, I imagined it a dragon's lair: filled with mountains of glittering treasures…

Etherion, I suspected, was very much taken with the Orphan who lived in the Western wing. Tamma often found roses on her pillows, chairs, windowsills and tables. I loathed Tamma intensely: she was small and plump with a pink face and a pink mouth and pink cheeks and grey eyes and hair that was so bright and curly it made me feel sick. I killed her dog once.

Seven, the Orphan who lived n the South-Western wing, loved ribbons. He loved wearing them, decorating things with them, playing with them, eating them (I saw him I swear!) and giving them. He gave the most to me. He gave me pale pink ones and black ones and sombre green ones and pearly blue ones and grey ones and even bright orange ones. He gave me some in lace and some in satin and some in velvet and some in silk. He'd come behind me one morning during breakfast, and grab my hair, pulling me back against the back of my chair. Then he'd thread his long slim fingers through the strands, make little plaits in the mass and tie them with long ribbons of varying colours according to my garments this day. Then he'd smooth the whole lot in my back, and sit down at the table in a heap of slim fingers and cascading ribbons.

I absolutely ignored who lived in the North-Eastern wing.

When I wasn't off roving, I had to stay at home and study. I loathed it, though what I mostly loathed about it was my preceptor. He was ancient: at forty-two, he should already have been dead, but he held on tightly to his life. Like a boa constrictor holding on to a dying child…His hair was an untidy heap of long, straggly pale knots around his long, emaciated face, and his eyes were huge and black and they fixed me with an implacable, unwavering stare. His name was Pikehart.

'Father Pikehart,' I was forced to simper every morning as I entered the brightly-lit study.

'Where have you been dragging yourself, girl?' he'd attack me at once, 'you look filthy. Have you never been taught elegance? Is this hair I see around your disgraceful face, or straw splattered with cow dung?'

'Pardon me, Father Pikehart, I am sorry, Father Pikehart, I shall never ever do it again, Father Pikehart,' I simpered on, not listening.

'Fetch this mirror yonder, gaze at yourself, what see you? Filth, crude ugly filth.'

'Yes, Father Pikehart, you are right, Father Pikehart, forgive me, Father Pikehart,' I recited my litany with increasing glee every morning. I rather enjoyed it…

'Well, if we cannot save your face, maybe we could try saving your brains, but then again, you do not have brains, do you, girl? You just have two flies fluttering around in the empty space behind your eyes and between your ears, do you not?'

'Yes, Father Pikehart, you are right, Father Pikehart, pardon me, Father Pikehart, I am woefully sorry, Father Pikehart, I deserve to fall into an open sewer and die, Father Pikehart,' I chanted on.

'Bring your books out nonetheless, disgraceful infant. Let us see how you fare in Latin, the fairest of languages.'

As he opened my Latin books, his eyes would cloud over with the mists of love. He loved the language with the love of the one who loves nothing else. He caressed the Latin books' spines with long, gentle strokes, kissed the pages with trembling thin lips, and spoke it with a ringing, adoring voice. In fact, I even heard that he had tried to get his name changed to Ceasarius Pikecardius. I think. His adoration and dedication for the language was not, however, mirrored by mine. When he ordered me to speak in Latin, I merely contended myself with extending words thus:

'Yessius Fatherius Pikecardius. Est not my faultius if I didn'tae learnius my lessonsae.'

Once I did a whole redaction like this, and he gave me a round, scratchy zero and wrote in his tilted, scratchy writing: 'Idiotae Idiotae Idiotae est est,' which I chose not to understand.

Artist's Comment

I had a lot of fun with Seven, and Father Pikehart—specially Pikehart! I really like him, and I love how she hates him. Anyway. Yeah, so, all the characters in this chapter popped out of my imagination, except for Seven, who was actually inspired by someone I crossed in the street one day, and whom I just exaggerated and rejuvenated. XD

Hope you like it.


	6. Lord Sulphur and Lady Alcha

Fantaësie Gothaëca

I—Shaede

Chapter VI—Lord Sulphur and Lady Alcha

Eventually I reached the age of sixteen. From a graceless bizarre infant I grew into a graceless bizarre adolescent, and from the day I turned sixteen I kept all my possessions prepared for my flight following my meeting with my guardians. The invitation came exactly two months after my sixteenth, and I received it with a feeling of finality: it marked the end of my sojourn in Earthenstar. I dressed in my best garments: the gown of azure velvet over lacy silk petticoats, the satin corset, white gloves and slippers. Ell, my maid, braided my hair into a loose knot at the back of my head, securing it with a sapphire hair brooch. It was the only one I had left anyway, because she had stolen all the others, or so I suspected. Her simpering manners and doe eyes seemed to me very suspicious: clearly, no one with absolutely honest intentions could look so sweet. Of course, it might very well have been Etherion, but what could a boy do with hair brooches? If at least he had stolen Tamma's hair brooches, it would have been understandable: I often read about silly gentlemen who stole silly gentlewomen's ribbons and hair and handkerchiefs and such to keep a souvenir of the lady in question. Which is absolutely nonsensical, though, of course, I am no man to judge. This does not mean that my intelligence isn't superior to a man's. On the contrary. Men who steal women's ribbons could never be more intelligent than a woman who steals…everything else. Not that I steal everything else—I do not—but this was merely an example, and purely theoretical.

When the loathsomely doe-eyed Ell had finished doing my hair and fastening the laces of my corset, I selected a mask and tied it around my face, grabbed my missive and went to see my guardians.

I had never been in their wing before, but now that I found myself inside it, guided by a valet who had more spots on his face than hair on his head, I understood why I had been spared such a torment: everything, absolutely everything, in Lord Sulphur and Lady Alcha's apartments was pink. The walls were in pink silk wallpaper, the ceilings in pale pink, the carpets and curtains were covered with pink flamingos and pink flowers, the couches were pink, strewn with pink satin cushions, the tapestries were in shades of pink, the delicate marbles of the furnishing were pale pink, the roses in the pink vases were pink, the paintings on the wall were of pink-dressed pink people surrounded by pink settings, the pink raspberries and strawberries in the pink-tinted glass bowls, the pink birds in the pink-painted cages…

I closed my eyes, feeling sick as I stumbled in the spotty valet's wake. He stopped in front of a pink door, turned around towards me and asked:

'Whom shall I announce?'

I threw him a look of pure incandescent loathing, and told him, my whole nature rebelling and rearing against the sickening indignity of it, my name:

'Fantaësie.'

He nodded, giving me a blank, valet type of look, then turned back to the door, knocked on it, went in and announced grandly:

'Her Lonelyship Orphan Fantaësie.'

I glared at him, willing my eyes to be muskets and for him to die with as much agony as humanly possible—myself being an expert of the subject, my mind was immediately flooded with visions of tortures so refined and horrifying I permitted myself three shudders.

'Ah. Fantaësie.'

The solemn declaration broke in through my beautifully monstrous meditations like the survivor of a shipwreck breaking up from the raging sea. I looked up at my guardians.

It was Lord Sulphur who had spoken from the chair in which he was sitting with a book spread on his thighs. He was clad entirely in a loud brown that clashed so magnificently with the pink that surrounded him my respect for him soared up into dazzling infinities. His pale face among the tangle of brown curls was splattered with pale brown freckles, a long, thin, abnormally curving mustachio divided his face between his plump ruby-red mouth and his immense childish brown eyes. He managed to look at once surprised and depressed and joyful, and he kept twisting the left curl of his mustachio round the index of his left hand, which wore a ring crowned with a great brown stone.

His wife was lounging on the couch which faced his seat opposite a pale pink marble table. Her long dyed bright pink hair hang over the arm of the couch in a satiny fall that crashed to the pink ground in a pink trail. She was clad all in pink, the pink sleeves of her dress showing the firm roundness of her pink arm, her nails painted in pink and pink satin slippers at her feet. A pink bow hung over her right ear, and her face was made up entirely in pink: pink lip-blush, pink blush, pink eye-shades and pink eye-lines. Cascades of tourmalines and pink topazes pooled at her throat. She was lazily stroking a pink poodle.

Had I not been so overwhelmed and weakened by the excess of pinkiness, I would have laughed, for indeed this seemed to me the most incongruous couple I had ever, in my entire fascinating life, beheld.

'Well then.'

Sulphur gave me a surprised, depressed and joyful smile and went on in a surprised depressed and joyful way:

'It has been a long time.'

He took a deep breath.

'Now the time has come.'

He paused.

'To remove your mask.'

I flipped my hand in his direction and announced:

'Oh, that won't be necessary.'

He blinked at me.

'It is tradition,' he observed with surprise, depression and joy.

'Indeed. But traditions are so boring, are they not?' I asked, giving him a bright smile from under my mask.

His wife punctuated my declaration with a languorous yawn.

'Well then,' had he not looked so surprised and joyful, I think Lord Sulphur would have died with the depression.

He blinked at me some more, curling his mustachio around his left index so frantically I thought he might pull it right off. I imagined the scene. It was satisfyingly gory and painful.

'Help me,' he tossed at his wife.

She raises great pink eyes in my direction. I had never seen some of those before, and I did not estimate them possible, though eye surgery had advanced greatly in the last few years.

Lady Alcha yawned. She wiped her eyes with pink fingers that were weak under the weight of a dozen pink-jewelled rings.

'…Fantaësie…' she sighed exhaustedly, '…how are you my dear?'

'I could not fare better, thank you, your ladyship,' I dropped a curtsey in her direction, which she acknowledged with a yawn.

'…Good…Good…Excellent…'

She stretched herself and then resumed.

'…We are throwing a ball for you...'

'I know.'

'…Good…Ravishingly good…Well…You'll be married soon then, won't you?'

'Yes,' I lied convincingly.

'…Wonderful…This is absolutely most wonderfully wonderful...'

She yawned yet again.

'…I must rest now…Have a good day...'

'You too. Lady Alcha.'

I curtsied to her.

'Lord Sulphur.'

I curtsied to him and he blinked in response.

I went out. The spotty-faced wan valet lead me back out of the apartment, leaving me at the door. I resisted the urge to kick him where it would hurt him very much, and instead hastened back to my own quarters. There, I sent Ell away on an early leave, and quickly packed the last of my most precious possessions. I removed my elegant garments and instead put on the most practical clothes I could find: solid leather breeches and boots, which I fastened with buckles at the calves, thighs and waist, a strong cotton chemise, a thick man's canvas shirt, over which I put a satin-lined leather waistcoat, s velvet jacket and a large leather overcoat. I slipped on my silk gloves, tucking the leather ones into one of my coat pockets, removed the brooch from my hair and tied it in a loose, raggedy braid down my back and hid my head under a wide-rimmed hat on one side of which a mass of feathers piled, flickering softly as I moved. Picking up my two heavy bags and the two rolled-up blankets I'd prepared, I slammed my way out of my apartments.

On my way to the kitchens, I called to one of the footmen to saddle a horse. He gave me the trademark blank valet look, and then wavered away like some weak holographic image. In the kitchens, I packed a satchel of food and drink, and then went out through the back door into the stables. The horse, a serene looking ebony-coloured mare, stood at the gates, eating the grass with a gentleness that suggested that she was very sorry she had to hurt every single blade but they would have a good time inside her stomach. Knowing biology as I did, however, I knew that a good time would not be what the unfortunate grass would get: pain and acids were more on the program for them…poor little things, I added to myself with a sorry smirk.

I tied my packages to the saddle, and then mounted. Taking off my hat in a sweeping, spectacular gesture, I waved it at the footmen and various maids that stood staring in bewilderment at me, and then galloped off towards my glorious destiny.

Artist's Comment

Right, this is the end of the first part, Shaede. Hope you enjoyed it. I know nothing much happened in there, but worry not! Things will definitely start happening in the next chapters. Courage! One part down, only tow dozens to go!—only kidding! XD


	7. Faust

Fantaësie Gothaëca

II—The Tempest Underground

Chapter I--Faust

I had it planned all along: with it being virtually impossible to leave Shaede, the walls surrounding it being flawed by no door, window or break whatsoever and far too tall to be reached by any means, my escape route would be the underground. After all my restless exploring of those inner parts of the Broken Glass Factory, I had deduced that the only way to get out of Shaede and into other cities was through the world's bowels. The prospect did not scare me: I would miss Sataerylm, horribly so, but this was a sacrifice I was willing to make to reach my ultimate, if just rather vague, goal: to somehow climb up the castes and reach those who had stood like the shadows of creatures greater than any Emperors during my whole life: the Engineers, and through them, ultimately, to Mage Ekt himself. Though did not possess the faintest clue as to how I would reach them, I had a limitless confidences in my own intellectual skills, and believed they would take me wherever I needed. So into the undergrounds I sank, like the shadow of a kelpie sinking down into murky waters and vanishing out of sight. As I could not take the ebony mare with me, I sold it to a merchant: I had only to take off my hat and show him my face and he offered me twice the price anyone would have expected for a single animal.

After I'd sold my horse and went down, I took out from one of my packs the two main objects I'd need: a lantern and my own map of the Shaede Underground. Reaching into one of my coat pockets, I got out a box of matches, struck one of them and carefully lit the lantern. Raising it above my head, I looked for some indication of where I was. There was no doubt I stood in the middle of what once had been an underground train station: metal benches stood along the edge of the platform, their rusty planks covered in cushions of moss. To my right and as far as the lantern's weak lights could lit stretched out the counters where, apparently and according to my various history books and sources, people had sold trains. Dragging my packs behind me, I went towards the counter, and found what I was looking for: a large plastic plate bearing the words: Flailsworth Station in faded letters. Triumphant, I set down my lantern on the counter, and opened my map. A few seconds later I had located Flailsworth, and deduced that the closest way out of Shade would be to go either straight east, or, if this proved impossible, head south-east.

So my journey started. Not bothering with any pause, and rarely ever minding when I got ribbing stitches. Eventually, my lantern started to weaken, and my eyes started to sting rather disagreeably, and after I'd stumble over train rails for the fifth time, the strength to push myself back upwards on to my aching feet failed me utterly, and I remained lying face down in the ballast, my packs on top of me and my lantern clattered to the ground.

When I woke up, it was with no idea whatsoever as to how long I'd slept. The joints of my limbs, especially the knees and elbows, ached, and the side of my face which had been pressed against the harsh ballast through my fallen straw hat throbbed dully. I sat up, rubbing my face and pushing hair out of my eyes: the darkness around me was absolute, pure, as though I was locked in the inside of a jet stone. A bottomless, frighteningly unfathomable night enshrouded me, but somehow I did not feel scared. I reached into my back and blindly groped for the zip, which I slashed open. I bright light cascaded out of the green canvas cloth, as a tiny dog sauntered out of the bag, dazzling fluorescent green light pouring from its mouth and eyes. I grabbed it by the neck before it started licking my face off with its tiny rough copper tongue, and twisted it around in search of my lantern. After I'd lit it with a match I placed carefully back in one of my pockets, I looked into my little dog's flank: I'd placed a finely worked clock there, consequently naming the little mutt Chrono—a word which I'd been assured by some detestable man I somehow cannot remember meant 'time' in Latin.

The long, fine golden needles indicated that it was a little after three, but whether it was of the morning or the afternoon I had absolutely no idea. I sighed, reached inside my food satchel, and gobbled down some water and bread. Then I placed Chrono of my shoulder, hitched my bags on my shoulders, picked up the lantern and set off for my second day on the road towards my brilliant destiny.

In the rusty underworld, time did not exist, I deduced after what I estimated five days, though it may have been three, or even seven, of travelling through it. There was no sound whatsoever, apart from the sound of my heavy breathing and footsteps, the occasional yaps of my irritatingly enthusiastic Chrono, and the gloomy dripping of water from pipes in the not-so-distant distance. Though I denied it vigorously to myself, I was starting to quite miss the sound of horses' hooves clattering on the cobbled streets, the voices of the hollering merchants and the constant blabbering and chattering of Flaeme's unruly poet's mouth. Such useless human feelings were, I told myself hostilely, as unneeded as they were pathetic and undignified. A person gifted with talents and an intellectual level such as mine could not possibly allow themselves to feel such degrading things. So I hitched my bags I little higher, gripped my lantern a little tighter and held Chrono a little closer, and marched down through the gargantuan belly of my world.

The ragged routine of my journey settled in on me, as my eyes dulled from all the darkness and my breathing got much more rapid, hissing through my teeth and rattling down my parched throat. I drank more, ate less, and started to stink. Though this fact did not bother me when I fell asleep, every single time too tired even to spread out my blankets and arrange my bags into make-shift pillows. But during the day, when I walked and meditated the most profound aspects of existence, the stench troubled my thoughts like a devilishly persistent child throwing stones into water. When it became unbearable, I discarded them with relief, donned fresh trousers, shift, chemise, and shirt; and went on.

Days, weeks and months melted into one long stretch of darkness and dark thoughts, and when, after waking up one from one of my usual deep sleeps, I stumbled into a patch of light thrown by a torch nailed high into the wall, my muddled mind hardly registered the incongruous fact. A man sitting on the floor with a long grey dog on his lap looked at me with bulbous eyes and said nothing. I walked past him without a reaction.

It dawned on me a few meters away. I had just seen a torch, a dog and a man. Or had I? Surely, it must only be my feverish brain sending random pictures to my glazed eyes: the man did not exist, nor did the dog, nor did the torch, which, now that I came to think of it, looked remarkably like the torch that stood over my head, glowing from high up the dark wall. This time I stopped. Something was wrong. Feverish brains sent rapid pictures that flashed before one's eyes in glimpses of two or three seconds. They did not stand here, looking down on you with insolent orange eyes. Or with bewildered pale jade eyes, for what it mattered, and now that I came to look back down again.

'Who are you?'

'Who are you?'

The squeak and the rasp. The little startled mouse speaking and the scrawny dazzled bear replying. The person standing in front of me with a bright white lantern dangling form his hand could not have been much older than twelve, maybe even thirteen; and then looking ridiculously young for his age. He was clad in a white shirt, fine waistcoat matching the kerchief around his collar, dark breeches and stout boots. His hair was like a sweep of pale silvery shadow around his thin juvenile face and his eyes where like bright pale green jades.

'My name is Faust,' he squeaked in his mouse's voice, 'I live here. Who are you? I never saw you before. Are you a messenger from Above?'

'Are you calling me an angel?' I asked, affronted and taking one threatening step towards the insulting little shaver.

'An angel?' he gave me a blank look.

'What's a messenger from above if not an angel?' I snapped, growing irritated.

'What are you talking about?'

'What are _you_ talking about?' it seemed as though any last remaining scrap of sense had left the discussion.

'Listen,' the boy steeled himself and spoke with saintly patience, 'who are you?'

'Fantaësie,' I snapped, and added under my breath, '_you tyke_.'

'It's a nice name,' the boy beamed at me in this saintly (mouse) way he had, 'why are you here for?'

'I'm leaving Shaede,' I announced grandly.

'Shaede?' he looked surprised: even his squeak had a note of startled within its piercing height, 'you're coming from Shaede?'

'Aren't we under Shaede anymore?' I asked, feeling my spirits rise.

'Hell's bells lady!' the little boy laughed a high-pitched squeaky laughter, 'you must have come a mighty long way! You're currently under no less than Evaniae.'

He looked so proud it caused me joy to tell him the truth:

'What's Evaniae?'

The pride left his face, which clouded over with incredulity.

'You don't know what Evaniae is?' he squealed, and this time, the mouse which was squeezing out his voice was dying, judging by the desperate shrillness of the tones.

'I do not have the foggiest idea what it is,' I informed him gleefully.

'How can you not know Evaniae? It's the greatest, most beautiful city in the whole entire Broken Glass factory.'

'Is it?' I said coldly.

'Yes!' he shrilled.

'If you say so,' I allowed smugly.

He gave me a miserable look.

'Still,' I went on, waving my hand and the subject away: 'do you know how I get back up?'

'What—wait. You want to go back up?' the boy looked at me irritating incredulity.

'Well, um, _obviously_.'

'So. Wait. You mean you haven't come to join the Tempest Underground?'

'The what?' I asked, thinking that this boy was probably ill in the head or something very similar anyway.

'You don't even _know_ what the Tempest Underground _is_?' he choked.

I wondered how in the world the mouse could survive such an apoplexy attack, then resumed, with saintly patience:

'Listen little brat. Tell me where the nearest exit is.'

'You want to go back up, then?' he asked, looking disappointed.

'Yes,' I sighed, glad that we were finally drawing conclusions.

'I don't know any exits,' he declared.

I groaned, smacking my hand on my eyes.

'But I can very well take you to my uncle: he'll probably know where the exits are.'

'Very well, then. Let's go.'

I picked my bags up from the floor, and started to walk beside the green-eyed kid. More and more torches seemed to appear on the walls, nailed to wooden beams. Apparently, we had moved from former train tunnels to mine tunnels: the earth, lit by the torches and lanterns, gave off a strange glitter, as though there were some bright powdered gems mixed with the hard soil. The ground was no longer covered in ballast and metals rails, but much smoother, a thin layer of fresh soft brownish moss covering it.

As we progressed through the underground corridors, we started crossing people along our way: tall slim women with faded hair and bright eyes, men carrying piles of paper or boxes hurrying past us. At one point, a thin-haired young man with deep carved lines around his mouth and eyes stopped by us, and popped his head from around an obviously heavy wooden box sporting the words: 'Hendle with Cayre—Frajayal contents.'

'Ah Faust! I see you've finally found yourself a sweetheart!'

Faust blushed heavily and swung a half-hearted kick at the young man's leg.

'Careful,' the latter said brightly, 'you might harm something along with me!'

'The inscriptions on your box are spelt wrong,' I announced scornfully.

'I know they are,' he winked at me: 'It makes Esta angry, so I do it. She loves me ever more when she's angry with me, bless her sweet soul.'

'Go away,' Faust said, his cheeks tainted with the most grotesque of pinks.

'Shall I kill him? If you tell me to kill him, I'll kill him,' I muttered to Faust as the man sauntered away with his burden.

'You can't kill him! He's my sister's fiancé. She loves him.'

'He's a cretinous dunderhead,' I said, flipping my hand dismissively at him.

'That's true, but she still loves him, and as the age-old saying goes: we are all fools in love…' the infant said wisely.

I stared at him in incredulity, children shouldn't speak this maturely:

'Listen, tyke, how old are you?' I asked.

'Fourteen, much may the knowledge please you,' the little boy bowed at me.

'You liar,' I said serenely.

'Fourteen and twelve days exactly, ma'am,' he said proudly.

'Fourteen? You can't be fourteen,' I spat.

'Listen, lady. I'm at least five years older than you. You can't be older than ten, so it should seem logical that I'm fourteen.'

I swung around and hit him across the face.

'Ow!' he whined.

'Don't you ever _dare_ say I'm ten again, you stupid little lying _mouse_!' I snarled.

'I'm _sorry_!' he wheezed, rubbing his crimson cheek, 'I honestly thought you were te—younger. How old are you then?'

'I'm sixteen, you _tyke_!'

He let out a yell of laughter. Lest I might hit him again and rip his head off, which he rightfully deserved, though unfortunately infanticide was a crime of which I simply could not render myself guilty, I stormed away. He immediately hurried after me, and grabbed my hand and stopped me.

'Oh, please forgive me! I sincerely never meant to hurt your feelings!' he cried with regret and laughter in his horrid mouse voice.

'You sound like a mouse that's dying. You deserve to die, insulting the best Cartographer of Pain, Botanist, Biologist, Explorer, Lifesaver and Thinking Person in the whole of the Broken Glass Factory!' I flung my titles in his face with lavish arrogance, and then resumed my dramatic withdrawal from his rodently presence.

'I had a mouse once!' he said, running after me, 'And it died. How did you guess?'

'I'm psychic,' I said, with withering sarcasm.

'Are you?' he demanded in wide-eyed admiration, completely missing the magnificent irony of my statement

'No.'

'Aw, I got all my hopes up for a moment! I thought, maybe, if you had been a real psychic, not like this crook Evaneskant Earl—'

'Evaneskant Earl, for your measly knowledge, _tyke_, was a real psychic!'

'He most certainly was _not_!' Faust squeaked indignantly.

'What do _you_ know about psychicology?' I threw at him.

He was about to give me a very obviously flimsy reply, as tykes his age always do when they are cornered, but we were prevented when I walked straight into a woman that stood in my way, sending a pile of documents flying all around us, so that for a few seconds we stood staring at each other among a swirl of yellowish birdlike floating papers.

Artist's Comment

Here! I told you stuff would start happening. Sort off…XD I had tremendous fun inventing Faust and her feelings towards him. I'd like to have your very own opinion, because that beats any pleasure I might feel when inventing and writing. Criticism, positive or negative, is ENCOURAGED, so, knock yourself out—and if you have any suggestion, let me know!


	8. Valencielle

Fantaësie Gothaëca

II—The Tempest Underground

Chapter II—Valencielle

She was wearing a purple velvet dress, with a long silver necklace at the end of which hung three tear-shaped stones, one big as my littlest finger, the second one half it's size, and the last one tiny. The biggest one was of some shimmering colour which immediately caught my eyes, because every time I told myself it was amethyst, it turned out to be silver, and when I was persuaded it definitely _was_ silver, I realised it was in fact some pale smoky blue, only it wasn't a pale smoky, but amethyst…The two other stones were respectively amber-sunflower-yellow and mutating green-grey. The chain was in some excessively glittering silver, finely woven links interlaced with strings of pale violet and silver silk. I narrowed my eyes at this masterpiece of craftsmanship, and immediately started coveting the necklace.

'Child,' the woman hissed in a breathless sort of voice, as though somehow she could not gasp enough air into her lungs, 'would you care to help me gather these maps and plans if you please?'

Feeling as though I owed it to her, since she had such a beautiful necklace, I sank to my knees on the hard earthy floor, but Faust had already gathered every single sheet of paper in his tiny arms and was handing a neat pale over to the necklace lady.

'Here, Valencielle,' he smiled into her brilliant, strangely glazed pale eyes, and pushed the pile against the lady's bosom.

She crossed her arms over it and smiled in Faust's direction.

'Thank you, Faust,' she sighed.

'It is always a pleasure. Have you lost your spectacles again?'

The lady gave a dazzling smile.

'I most unfortunately have, dear, _dear_ boy. I suspect I have left them at Etienne's, though I dare not venture for them in this state, lest he hold them for ransom, the lawless brigand,' she giggled slightly and breathlessly, her voice breaking several times across her little story.

'I shall pass through his and search for your spectacles, have no worry, Valencielle. Shall I walk you to the Clocksroom?'

'There will be no need, _adorable_ boy, no need at all,' she gasped and wheezed and hissed, 'I apologize for taking up so much of your time, children. I shall liberate you.'

And away she sauntered.

'Who the very devil is this absolutely delightful person?' I asked in awe, staring after the retreating violet form.

Faust gave a squeak of a laugh.

'That is the Duchess of Clawe, Valencielle Emmerwick. She is the most brilliant Cartographer of all times.'

'What's that necklace she wears around her neck?' I then enquired with such skilful nonchalance biographers could have written a book about it alone.

'Some charm given to her by a magician, or so she says anyway. It the only thing that helps her see, and even then she still needs her spectacles. Without the necklace she'd be stone blind, poor, beautiful soul…'

This revelation operated on me great sentiments, though I should be unable to describe them, so strong and inexplicable they were.

'Why does she speak in such a way?'

'What way?' Faust frowned at me.

'As though somehow her lungs did not get enough ioxygen, or too much, depending on how solidly constituted you are.'

'Oh that?' Faust guffawed mousily, 'she just talks like that.'

'Isn't she a bit old to be still alive?'

'She drinks and bathes everyday in Elaethium…she won't be dead for some time, I can assure you. But when she dies, everyone here at the Tempest Underground shall mourn her for three months.'

He shook his head, touching an invisible hat.

'What's the Clocksroom?' I said, as we took a turning so sharp I banged my shoulder painfully against a wooden door, with the consequence that a hoarse voice yelled from inside:

'He's out! He ain't here anymore! Go look for him at the Tav and lemme die in peace!'

'The Clocksroom…' Faust said in would-be mystical tones.

'Yes, the Clocksroom, that's what I said, isn't it—where _are_ we?'

The settings in which I found myself moving could not leave me indifferent anymore: it seemed we weren't walking between walls anymore, but houses, ranged in ragged narrow files, dirty orange light falling from windows, sometimes tainted with the violet or ocean-blue of curtains. Standing at the top of three or four steps rose every now and then tall narrow doors, with iron animal heads holding knockers and, occasionally, little rusty bells and braided cords hanging limply from their sonorous insides. Wrought iron poles protruded from high up stone and wooden walls to let hang wooden board reading or sporting insignias either in words or in images. Some of them were old and cobweb from them hung like shimmering scraps of dreams as they swung creakily back and forth, and others were new and glossy and brilliantly painted. Parcels and wooden boxes were packed at the bottom of some doors, and sometimes, one of them stood open, giving me glimpses of the life inside: a little girl with floating silver braids cascading down a narrow staircase after a runaway boy clutching a flour doll; two young women dancing to a hectic violin tune and laughing as they tripped and fell over each other's petticoat hems; a young man and an old man, one sporting a brilliant sky-blue hat with a splendid white plume, the other strangled in an olive-green neckcloth, kept snatching a worn leather volume from each other, while arguing noisily; a man with fashionably tousled hair walked back and forth between two doors, carrying tall delightfully teetering piles of paper every time…

Though the men dressed fashionably enough, and the women richly and elegantly, none of this could equal the innate richness and nobility of the Orphans, the Guardians or the fashionable courts that seemed to dictate sartorial laws in Shaede. Also, there was something strangely eerie wit the unnatural pallor of the people I saw: those eyes covered in thin white sheens, similar to some grim cataract; the pale floating hair and faded skin, like a cloth washed too many times in scalding waters…They all reminded of some sad creatures haunting one of Quellimclaron's Seven Haells

'I told you!' Faust cried, sounding half-amused half-impatient, 'the Tempest Underground. Come on, we've arrived at my Uncle's. _He_'ll answer all your questions.

Artist's Comment


	9. Geronte

Fantaësie Gothaëca

II—The Tempest Underground

Chapter III—Géronte

Faust had stopped us in front of one of the tall narrow houses. The door rose at the top of three narrow steps, little parcel tied in a pink satin boy lying on the topmost step. Faust picked it up, and then lifted the heavy iron ring that hung between the jagged teeth of a rusted turtle—or so it seemed anyway. The ring made loud contact with an iron nail under it, and the deep resounding sound of iron on iron resonated between the walls of houses. A few doors further down the tunnel, a window opened, and a girl flung her whole upper body out among the folds of thick pink curtains, long curling silver hair trailing down around her pale heart-shaped face. Artfully rosy lips opened to let out a cry:

'Faust! You went without me!'

Faust started and looked around guiltily. He opened his mouth the reply to the withering accusation, but the girl went out murderously;

'And who is this—person?'

'She's a lost lady I found wandering in the tunnels!' Faust cried back with the innocence of youth.

'So you have to make yourself obliging for every lost young lady you meet, yes?' there, the enraged adolescent burst into theatrical tears, and flung herself back among pink folds, slamming the windows shut on her disappearance.

'Laylabelle!' Faust cried tragically.

'What—Faust—crying at a young lady's window—how very ungentlemanly!' came a reproving voice, surprisingly close, and both Faust and I jumped back. I caught myself on the wrought iron railing which stood on my side of the steps, unfortunately Faust did not have such luck, so, to avoid tripping embarrassingly down the steps, he grabbed a great handful of my shirt. It ripped open, he let it go as though it had burnt him, fell embarrassingly down the steps, jumped back up to his feet, and I flung a slap in his face.

'You cad!' I yelled at him, looking at the ripped seam gaping open down my left side.

'I say—Faust—zounds!—how very shocking!'

I looked up. The man who had spoken raised a monocle to his pale grey eyes and squinted at me. He was dressed in an elegant velvet outfit, an azure waistcoat embroidered in silver covering his torso, and an immaculate white neck cloth folded neatly around his stiff collar. His pale brown hair hung in limp strands over dizzyingly tall forehead—he could not have been older than early twenty, and he acted, spoke and held himself in ways very much similar to some man I very difficultly recall, but who might have taught me a language. Latin was in the realms of the possibility. Possibly.

'Victor—it's not at all what you're thinking!' Faust said tragically, rubbing his satisfyingly crimson cheek.

'It's _exactly_ what he's thinking!' cried a voice muffled in pink curtains from a short distance away.

'I say…' Victor sighed, blinking at me, 'who may you be, gentle youth?'

'She's Fantaësie. I found her in the tunnels. She was lost. She wants to get back up, so I brought her here to see uncle,' Faust informed to peculiar monocled man hastily.

'Fantaësie. What a beauteous name….' he nodded, smiling faintly at me, 'pray do enter my humble abode. My father shall be with you in the shortest period of time humanly achievable.'

Victor stepped aside, letting the door open for me to walk through. I cast one last withering look at Faust and entered.

Inside, I found myself in a narrow corridor. The walls were painted in a subdued dark purple colour, faint-looking paintings of faint people doing things in excessively faint ways hung from nails, and a little glossy wooden table stood in a corner beside the door, covered in vases of flowers that looked more like a graveyard for deceased _amarate_ than anything else. Two doors stood at each side of the corridor, and a narrow staircase covered in a grey carpet led to an upper floor. Victor, letting his monocle fall down to dangle from the chain around his neck, opened a door and led me inside a room that was so full of books even the sound of the nailed soles of my boots against the worn wooden planks of the floor was muffled.

'Pray be seated,' Victor said, waving a pianist's faded thin hand to a little cluster of mismatched and worn chair and armchairs that stood around a short table covered in empty mugs, 'Quant à vous, Faust,' he said in a strange barbaric-sounding language I did not recognise, but visibly addressed to Faust, 'il vous faut recevoir une bonne leçon de morale. Nous en parlerons avec mon père, n'ayez craintes.'1

Faust collapsed into the folds of a lavishly cushioned armchair, looking terror-struck. Victor left, shutting the door behind him.

'What the Broken Glass Factory did he just say?' I asked with sumptuous imperiousness.

'Um,' Faust replied.

'What a brilliantly spirited retort,' I snapped, and crossed my arms over my chest and sat myself down.

I read the titles of the books which were piled pell-mell on wooden and iron shelves, but understood none: '_Théorie Des Mystères_,' '_Un Rêve Pour Un Nuage_,' '_Fonction du Mal—Les Conjectures Pourpres,_' '_Philosophie d'une Plume d'Opium_,' '_Orphelins et Apocalypse—Une Supposition_,' '_Sept Secrets et un Ravage_,' '_Donne Moi ton Âme, Car j'En Ai Besoin_,' '_Dites-le Avec Conviction_,' '_Les Jupons de la Virtue_,' '_Suppositions et Suggestions de L'Enfer_,' '_Les Baisers de Givres_'2…

'Ah, for the love of Sat—this leg will be the death of me, I am certain of it!'

The door slammed upon, the shock sending several books tumbling down from a shelf. The man who had just entered, however, did not bother to pick them up. Leaning heavily on a beautiful black and white cane, he jerked his way towards Faust and I, dragging a leg behind him, his pale eyes magnified to frightening proportions by a pair of ludicrously thick iron-framed oval glasses. He wore subdued, worn, dirty black clothes, but at his belt, showing through the lapels of his frock-coat hung a key ring made of thick perfect silver, so overcharged with keys of all sizes and shapes and colours that they did not even clink together, so tightly packed they were. I wondered what they opened. I resolved to find out and steal it. Or them. Whatever it was those magnificently numerous keys guarded anyway...

'Faust—son! I've heard you've been a very bad boy again…' the man grunted as he threw himself onto an armchair with the force of an unstoppable cannonball.

Faust threw a murderous look to Victor, who'd appeared behind the limping, fantastic man of the keys, and then cried in protest:

'Uncle! It wasn't at all what Victor supposed! He lied purposefully to you!'

'Never has or shall a lie pass the threshold of my lips!' Victor announced with a saintliness worthy of any saint in a young Faded's depressing panoply.

'By Sat and the Four Seasons! What an interesting specimen we have here!' the man with the keys explained, slashing his attention down upon me with a suddenness that threw Faust completely off-balance. It did not have the same effect upon me, of course, and I remained totally calm and cool as the man squinted and stared at me.

'Her name is Fantaësie, Uncle,' Faust, mortified and pink as Lady Alcha's hair, whispered.

'Fantaësie—what a perfectly delightful name. If I'm not mistaken it is was a Celestial Ruin…or was it a star-flower? I somehow cannot remember—Victor, as-tu une idée?'3

'I cannot say I have, Father,' Victor replied to his father's barbaric enquiry.

'I beg your pardon,' I addressed the man of the keys with as much respect as I felt all those keys owed, 'but what is this strange language you speak?'

'It is the language of Evaniae—though very few people still now it. A beautiful, very complex language I am afraid. We call it Hectorian.'

'Hectorian!' I said, digging inside myself for information.

I knew I most have known about it, though I could not remember—for my memory was of the capricious kind when it was in a mood…

'How interesting. And are all those books written in Hectorian then?'

I gestured to the walls of every-which-way books.

'Absolutely—absolutely! You should learn—for know that the world's greatest mysteries have been pierced with the help of Hectorian.'

'I thought—' I said carefully, 'that they had been pierced with the help of Latin?'

'Latin is but a rougher version of the finest of languages.'

Hearing this, I immediately resolved to find Father Pikehart (whose name and function suddenly sprung back to my memory—much to my surprise obviously,) and engage a conversation between those two doubtlessly cerebrally crazed men.

'May I make so bold as to enquire after the existence of those beautiful keys I see?' I then asked, with as much discretion as I had mastered earlier in my cross-examination of Faust's knowledge of the Duchess Emmerwick of Clawe's astoundingly beautiful magic necklace.

'You may!' the man boomed out, 'but only just after we have been perfectly introduced!'

There, he heaved himself with what looked like tremendous difficulty, and wheezed:

'Faust—do us the honour, son!'

Faust shook his head with rodently exasperation, and said:

'Miss Fantaësie, meet my Uncle, Géronte Arnolphe des Trissotins.'

'Sweet Damsel. Enchanted to make your acquaintance!'

Géronte Arnolphe des Trissotins touched an invisible hat, and then took my hand and bowed over it.

'I must be introduced too!' Victor cried, advancing as hastily as he could (which was slower than a snail trying to loose a race) and holding his monocle to his eyes with seemed to be something close to despair.

'Miss Fantaësie,' Faust said, looking, to my great pleasure, miserable, 'let me introduce you to my cousin… Victor Flavien des Quaies.'

'Lady! It's an honour!'

Victor imitated his father, and then drew back.

'I seem to have gathered that you have lost yourself amongst us, dear demoiselle?' Géronte des Trissotins said amiably, before adding sotto voce to Victor: 'Call for Louisellia and ask her to bring some refreshments—et ne te perds pas dans ses jupons, poète au front delicat!'4 he added in the beautiful language of Hectorian.

Whatever he said in this foreign tongue had a strange effect on Victor: he blushed profoundly, flustered, and stammered out:

'Mais—mon père—je ne—mon père!'5

'Vas!'6 the man of the keys said imperiously, giving his son a self-satisfied grin. Victor flew out with broken wings.

'Well. Where were we. Yes. So. At any rate. Pray quiz me as much as you will, for I am at your entire disposition!' he nodded his head at me.

'Um, I thank you very much for your help. May I enquire as to where we are—exactly,' I added, as Faust, looking increasingly annoyed and upset, opened his mouth indignantly.

'Aah…well, technically, we are simply underground. This whole city is only known through hear-says and legends back up on the surface of the BGF. They call it the Underworld, Underground, Tartarus…but it's all tattletales from gossip-thirsty noblewomen…we call it Asphodael—our little private joke,' Géronte chuckled darkly, 'but it really has no name—only we have. Obviously, nobody up there knows our real name—they call us the Morlock (petits imbéciles!) the Damned, the Spectres, and even sometimes we are known as 'Soul.' Apparently a spoilt Engineer's daughter came up with the idea of us being all the rejected souls Mage Ekt refused to use for Sat, so we—that is all the supposedly rejected souls, merged into one ultimately evil soul. Soul. Ha-ha. Women are lucky they're pretty, or else they'd be dead—they're so stupid.'

I rose at that. Keys or no keys, this was taking things a bit too far. My respect could not be stretch this much. I may loathe the feminine sex, but the masculine sex isn't much better, therefore they have no right—and I shall repeat—_no right_ what_so_ever to criticize, let alone _insult_ it. I gathered myself majestically out of my chair, and walked out of the room, slamming straight into Victor, who let go of his monocle and grabbed my shoulders in order not to fall. I knew he thought he was steadying me, but obviously I would not have fallen without his help, much on the contrary—he would fallen without my help.

'I demand that you take me out of this place immediately!' I told him.

'I say!' he said, 'I say—what, may I enquire—has slapped upon they cheek these cumuli nimbuses of dawn-pink?'

'Very well! If you will not let me out of here, I shall let myself out!'

And with all the dignity I could muster, I grandly exited this ignoble house. I am quite sure the fact that I tripped over the steps and nearly fell did not spoil the effect whatsoever. It happens to everyone to trip, even the best of us…

'Zounds!—by all the mirages of Phoenix Fields—I say! Quel comportement étrange chez une si faible demoiselle!' the faint cry reached my ears as I turned around a corner.

'Now—now! Miss Fantaësie! My Uncle did not mean what he said! Please come back and have some tea!'

'You! Leave me alone—tyke!' I flung over my shoulder at the puffing and huffing, ridiculously mouse-like Faust, 'lest I should sink my fist in your abominably hideous face!'

After that—I was left alone. I did not hear anyone call me, and nobody ran after me. I did not feel disappointed at all by this, I can assure you—on the contrary—I am quite sure that peculiar feeling was nothing more than the glow of triumph within my soul. Ere while, I sat myself down on a tiny flight of stairs, just beside a thin, flat wooden box reading the inscription: 'Fraught—let silver be torn.' I wondered what it meant exactly, for it seemed to me to hold the sort of beautiful complexity you often countered in the admirable craft of poetry, but try as I might, I could not open the box. So as not to loose any prestige or pride, I erased any proof that I had tried—and looked around, feeling mourn, and quite wishing Chrono were with me. I looked down to reach for him inside my bags—and realise that I didn't have them anymore.

Artist's Comment

1 'As for you, Faust, you need to receive a good lesson of morals. We shall discuss it with my father, fear not.'

2 'Theory of Mysteries,' 'A Dream for a Cloud,' 'Functions of Evil—The Crimson Conjectures,' 'Philosophy of a Feather of Opium,' 'Orphans and Apocalypse—A Supposition,' 'Seven Secrets and A Ravage,' 'Give Me Thy Soul, For a Need It,' 'Say It With Conviction,' 'The Petticoats of Virtue,' 'Suppositions and Suggestions of Haell,' 'The Frost Kisses.'

3 'Victor, have you an idea?'

4 'And do not loose yourself in her petticoats, poet of the delicate brow!'

5 'But—Father—I do not—Father!'

6 'Go!'


	10. Fraught

Fantaësie Gothaëca

II—The Tempest Underground

Chapter IV—Fraught

The world I lived in was very a strange, occasionally beautiful, and always cruel place. It was governed by a spirit more evil than any rumoured Soul, more twisted than any Shaede Manor, and more ironic than all of Von Spikendale's six sublimely sarcastic works put together…For here was I, standing in the middle of an underground city its inhabitant called Asphodael, sitting beside a box which's enigmatic contents I could not discover, and left entirely bereft of any possession except my torn shirt. Had I held a knife at this moment, I would have accomplished a very dignified, very praiseworthy suicide—but as things stood, I did not even have a knife. To make matters even worth, and to add further to my misery—I missed Sataerylm.

I missed her profoundly, furiously, agonizingly. I wanted to see her—I wanted her carnival-orange and bottle-green, and murder-red and sweet blue…All these lamplit, faded, character-less colours depressed me, dug holes into my heart. I wanted to sleep, I wanted to eat, I wanted to weep.

'Ah Let Silver Be Torn—finally! I was wondering whether this idiotic vermin was ever going to send it. But. I shall not shoot the messenger, for what use would it be? Do come in, my boy, I'll make you a little glass of something that'll make these shoulders stand straight back up all by themselves—you can always trust old Fraught's Essence of Triomphe to have that effect—up you get my lad—oh! How very, _very_ interesting! What a face you have—you remind me of someone I might have met somewhere…mmh, well, in any case. I guess by the shape of your mouth, no matter how damaged, that you are a woman—well, come on in nonetheless. I didn't know Sandran employed ladies—the idiot always had the greatest disregard for them—how very foolish I should think. But. Do not worry yourself over him, he'll come around the worth of femininity. I personally have always thought women would make a much better job of running the T.U. than a man. Obviously they must have thought so too, otherwise Valencielle wouldn't be asked in the Clocksroom ever two minutes—though I have my own personal theories about this, and let me tell you young lady—you don't want to hear them. You look by far much too young to know anything about men and there despicableness—and trust me, it is rather an advantage than a defect I can assure you!'

The man who had let out this typhoon of words finally paused, smiling down on me and gasping in his breath.

'I beg your forgiveness: I didn't even introduce myself! Old Fraught at your service—and who, if I may be so bold—would _you_ be?'

'Um. They call me Fantaësie,' I said, frowning at him.

He was dressed in untidy black and white clothes, and his hair, which was the colour of faded silver, floated down in sibylline wisps around his sharp, blade-shaped face, topped by the most beautiful top hat I had ever seen: gloriously glossy and black as a raven's wing.

'Fantaësie—aah! What a perfectly admirable name! I am very pleased to make your acquaintance—isn't Fantaësie the name of the explorer who created the delightful Essence of Destiny? No? I must have been sadly mistaken—but then again, I have the right, have I not, to be mistaken? When one reaches the age I have reached, one immediately earns many a right one would never obtain in youth—a fact for which I am glad,—though I am very much afraid that those little bits and bobs of rights are the sole advantages of old age. For however rude you are allowed to be, it does not counter balance the definitive loss of the privilege of courting—and this I miss very bitterly…But. I am sure you would rather be doing absolutely anything else rather than listen to my endless rantings and ravings, yes?'

'Absolutely, sir,' I replied politely.

'Fraught. I loathe it when a lady calls me sir, it is so old and cold and passionless. Pray call me Fraught. I would give you my first name, were it not so abominably hideous.'

'I gave you mine even though it is profoundly repulsive,' I countered reproachfully.

'Dear girl _dear_ _girl_! Repulsive? Most certainly not! The name Fantaësie has an enchanting, beautiful, eccentric sonority, and I am quite sure it is named after something incredibly admirable. If only I could remember what. I am afraid I will have to ask Arnolphe—he is the one with the trillion books in his abode—at any rate, let us not carry on this interesting discussion here on my doorstep. If you will be so kind as to hand me Let Silver Be Torn…?'

Eager to discover the fascinating insides of the parcel, I picked it up and handed it to the old man. He doffed his hat, then put it back on and took the parcel form my hands. He opened his door wide, stepping aside to let me in. Instead of walking into a narrow corridor, I found myself inside a wide room, filled with scent and perfumes that drifted around in ephemeral ribbons of faint shimmering colours. Tables filed along the walls and crossing the room all along its diagonals: they were made of planks of wood standing on piles of books, and they creaked and bowed under the weight of several thousands little tubes and bottles and phials and glasses of all shapes and sizes, and filled with liquids that glowed in the semi-darkness, bubbled, hissed, sloped around, fizzed and even occasionally exploded, along with the bottle they were in. Fires were lit in little iron trays all over the place, and where the tables weren't covered in these and the bottles of mystic, intriguing liquids were towering stacks of books, rising in papery, unsteady columns among the fumes and mists of alchemy that rendered this windowless room so very beautiful.

'You might as well wonder on this mess—well, let it not trouble your mind further, for what may appear a total bazaar is in fact nothing more than a terrifyingly well-organized bazaar. I've been experimenting on chemicals and alchemy for now—what—fifteen years? And I still haven't been able to produce what I'm looking for—there have been triumphs obviously, but unfortunately none of them satisfied our little fever king—ungrateful brat if you ask my very own personal opinion. Still, mostly everyone down here appreciates my genius—sadly, it is one of the things I miss the most about Above—the genii.'

'The—?'

'Genii. Plural for genius. Like incubi—incubus.'

'Oh. I understand,' I said, flushing lightly, and wishing I had remembered—for I was quite sure that I had known it all along—the genii thing.

'It matters not, it matters not. Still, I am quite happy about LSBT—I am sure it will help me make a real leap in the delicate and beautiful science of Chemicals. But. Before I get carried away by my tools and experiments, let me serve you some refreshment—you look positively starved! Doubtless Sandran has been starving you—the lifeless, heartless octopus.'

'Actually—I do not know anyone of the name of Sandran,' I declared.

'He has kept his name a secret? That crowns it all—how very ludicrous this man is—I honestly can see no bottom, no abyss to the depths and profoundness of this man's grotesquery—'

'What I meant was—I do not work for anyone. I did not deliver this parcel. I came from Shaede and am currently trying to find a way to go back up on the surface of the Broken Glass Factory—could you perhaps indicate the way to me?' I asked, hopefully.

'Now! That beats it all! How very intriguing. Pray, will you tell me your story while I concoct this drink for both of us?'

I looked at him for a moment, observing his careful, fascinated gestures as he poured drops of liquids into glasses and mixed them with other odd-looking liquids. He looked like someone I could trust—and moreover, he was a fellow genius. He and I were brother and sister genii. So I told him my entire fascinating history. When I finished, he handed me a glass filled with a luminous blue potion that reminded my nostalgically of the light of Sataerylm's blue gaze of the fountains of Shaede…

'How perfectly exotic,' Fraught said, stirring the incandescent contents of his glass with a long silver spoon, 'how truly captivating! I am most favourably impressed by this whole tale. I do hope you have not been lying to me, for that would prove to be a very bitter disappointment indeed…'

'I have told you naught but the entire and crystalline truth. May I ask your history now?'

I had planned it all: he would tell me his history, and then employ me as his assistant. We would become rich and famous beyond any mortal measures, and then rise back to the surface and into the skies and become higher than Engineers themselves—and ultimately throne beside Mage Ekt. It seemed like a good, realistic enough plan. I sat myself on one rickety cushioned stool, and took a sip form my drink. It tasted…like a mixture of fresh air, ice, mint, light, laughter and blue. A hint of blueberry floated at the very back of all those tastes and shades of perfumes. It was exquisite, a masterpiece among potions.

'I was born right up there, in Evaniae. Evaniae—how shall I say—is the city of beauty, art, glamour, philosophy and science. Did you know that Quellimclaron himself—you do know about Quellimclaron, I hope?—good—well, Quellimclaron himself lived there half of his life, and wrote many a book and poem about it? Had my memory been as brilliant as it was a few decades back, I would recite my favourite of them all, '_Gather Thy Skirts Evaniae!_', unfortunately I am not sure I remember every word. Still. It wasn't only Quellimclaron who loved Evaniae—Halloween, the Coffin-Bearer, composed a whole symphony describing its beauty and character…it was called _La Symphonie Des Araignées__1_ if I remember well—or was it _La Symphonie des Rubans_?2...I say—it was both of them! Yes, that's it. Two symphonies, composed and written solely about and for Evaniae. And not only the best musicians and poets loved it—but also the greatest painters—Sybylle des Temps d'Arylle painted numerous pictures of Evaniae, and so did Atlantyte and Clobert! But also the greatest philosophers, performers, alchemists, scientists and explorers. The cartographers adored this city, the bards and circuses sang and talked but of it—it was—is!—the very center of the world—it is beauty and darkness and art and light and knowledge and everything that is fascinating and ugly and beautiful!

'My parents were poor—I am afraid—very poor indeed. They were the leaders of a theatre troupe of the name of _Les Chevaucheurs de Corbeaux__3_. She was a musician—she played the violin with a mastery that was sublime and ripped your heart out of your breast when you listened to it—and my father was a playwright. He was known for only one of his plays, though, and that was _L'Enfant des Ombres__4_ He was great, intelligent and vivacious and eternally enthusiastic about everything. He could and would sing Evaniae's praise from dawn till dusk and dusk till dawn, Sataerylm or no Sataerylm. He died when I was twelve. At that time, all my preferences were orientated to music. I wanted to play the piano, but lessons were too expensive, so instead my mother taught me the violin. I had inherited her talent, and soon afterwards, I inherited the violin itself—for she died when I was fifteen. Left alone in the world at the head of a theatre troupe, with nothing more to my name than a glossy black violin and a ring my father had bequeathed me ere his departure, I decided of a new plan of action for me and my troupe: we ceased touring the city, and instead planted our tents right in front of Les Tours des Aigles—the glamorous, immense castle the royal family of Evaniae inhabited most of the seasons. We stayed there, and played and performed every day in the front court. The king's first councillor gave orders to have us physically removed, but the prince and princesses acted in our favour, and begged their father to have us perform in one of the back gardens, where they could easily watch us from their terraces.

'The royal family of Evaniae is a merry, cheery thing: the king, the fattest, jolliest man imaginable, loves his food and his children; the queen has a passion for perfumes and arts—and the children, well, they are beautiful things: the Prince, nineteen when I was but eighteen, is an intelligent youth. Beautiful, gay, he loves ladies and loves music. His sisters, Princess Citronia and Princess Myosotis, both sixteen back then, are lovely, very much feminine young ladies. Their admiration go to costumes, clothes, ribbons, jewels and such baubles. I do not remember when my flirtation with Myosotis started. I was one evening playing the violin under her windows while my troupe performed an amusing Vaudeville, and I saw a glimpse of the white lace of her petticoats on the terrace overhead. Then a pale pink rosebud fell right on top of my head. I looked up, but she was gone, so, I resolved to return the rose to her. One thing led to another, and before long, we were exchanging passionate notes in secret and meeting furtively behind rose bushes, snatching stolen kisses from each other, until her brother caught us both in the act. He found the whole idyll quite amusing, and proposed that I would marry Myosotis. It effectively cooled down all my youthful ardour. I declined.

'Performing each night for the royal children was a very bountiful business. Les Chevaucheurs de Corbeaux grew rich, but one after the other all my actors and performers were dying. They had all started in their twenties, along with my parents, and by the time fame finally reached them, it was too late. I am afraid the bitterness that seized me at this atrocity of life had a destructive effect upon me. I broke my violin, pocketed my fortune and left my royal apartments. From then on, I started researching on a way to make my fellow human beings live longer. It seemed far too harsh of life to snatch itself from us so early—I wanted to stop it all, to let a smile creep on an old man's face, for a change, instead of letting death slide his cold fingers up a thirty-year-old woman's spine. I researched and searched and researched, and my researches led me here, beneath Evaniae herself, into a world which's existence I had only heard of through legends and rumours whispered from betwixt lips trembling half with fright half with laughter. I met young Spaede and myopic old Val and the frightful Charmien—the three pillars of the Tempest Underground. They told me of their secret society, its goals and achievements and plans. I joined, and am currently working on a Level Crimson secret weapon.'

I nodded, rather impressed by the whole tale, and its grippingly dramatic conclusion.

'What's level crimson?' I asked, asking myself how come I had forgotten so many useful facts—for obviously, I knew what a level crimson was.

'Level Crimson signifies top level for secrecy—and when I say top level, my dear child—I mean top level. It is a level of secrecy so high no mere mortal could acquire it without showing some truly heroic traits of character. Currently, we are only four to have reached this glamorous level: Spaede, Charmien, Val and I. It is quite obvious why Val was chosen—she is the most intelligent creature in the entire BGF, and what a trustworthy and admirable lady she is—even though rather fantasque, odd—eccentric? Yes, you could say so. Charmien would let himself be devoured alive by carnivorous rats (and we all know how much he loathes them—a loathing, my dear—a loathing of such epic proportions, it's become almost a war—a colossal war of rationality against this immense, raging hatred of rodents!) than reveal any secret imparted to him by anyone—that's how honourable he is, even though, in my honest and most modest opinion, the gentleman's intense sense of honour may have been induced by his slight mental instability. As for Spaede—he's the ultimate leader, isn't he—after E, I mean—after all, he's the only one actually in contact with him, so I guess it stands to reason, even though the young man's naught but a maimed fanatic,' Fraught said, as he poured himself a second glass of the blue potion.

'Will you tell _me_ what the secret is?' I asked, engagingly.

'Of course not!' Fraught looked slightly outraged as he emerged form a long sip of his beverage, 'Well, not unless you are given the crimson mark from Val, Spaede or Charm, I suppose. That would depend on whether you would be willing to sacrifice you're whole being to the cause, and give yourself soul and body to the Tempest Underground. I am sure you would, since you look like an intelligent enough young lady, but ultimately, it's all up to Spaede to decide.'

'May I meet them?' I asked, thinking that what with my own incredibly advanced intellect (Fraught himself thought so!) and men's general idiocy, I would probably very easily gain this wonderful crimson mark. After all, did I not deserve it? Of course I did.

'Um, I don't quite know…I suppose if they have time…Actually, I was supposed to go to a meeting, in three days, to the main quarters…Tell you what: you stay here over the night: I have a spare room, and you may as well rest under my roof—you are welcome; and tomorrow we'll both go together. I'll talk to them and enquire whether you may meet them and learn fully about the TU. I am personally persuaded they shall let you, but you never know—humans are very volatile beings, shifting endlessly as time flies us by like a flock of black-winged birds. Are you favourable towards my plan?'

'Absolutely!' I said solemnly.

'Smashing! I knew you were an admirable person—I saw it this first time when I opened my door and saw you sitting distraughtly beside my darling Let Silver Be Torn,' he smiled at me.

'How do you know when it's the beginning and end of a day?' I then enquired as I lay down my empty glass on one of the great makeshift trestle tables.

'My dear, this seems quite obvious, does it not. Now that I come to think of it, it may not seem this obvious to a stranger. Clocks, child, clocks!' he replied.

'But don't you lose track from time to time?'

'Or course I do, and often at that. Wake up too late and not now whether a whole day or a half a day or two days have gone past and coming down here in my lab and finding a whole experiment ruined to shimmering ashes—time is a cruel, callous thing. The birds of time not only have black wings but cruel teeth and even crueller minds, I tell you this from personal experience,' he said, shaking his head wisely, and refilling my glass, 'but when such occurrence happens, I simply take myself to the Clocksroom, and settle my whole being back in the time slot where it belongs.'

'Thank you,' I said, picking up my full glass.

'It is my pleasure,' he doffed his top hat.

This man, I decided as hours went by, filled by strange delicious liquors and explanations of complex chemical patterns and twist, was a genius. He was intelligent, and very gallant—an exemplary man. In another life, he probably was my father.

The afternoon (so he told me it was—though in my opinion it felt more like night time) wore on slowly. I was rather tired, and hungry, though oddly exhilarated by one particular scarlet-golden potion Fraught had given me to absorb. He talked endlessly of well-known alchemists and their experiments, both successful and hilariously faulty and idiotic. As he did he showed me how various liquors, potions and elements were created. Though it all looked very complicated, my brain took in the information with ridiculous ease—this, I'm afraid, is how it feels to be a genius. After quite a number of hours had ticked noisily by from some ludicrously heavy clock in a shadowy corner, my attention started to waver, and my consciousness slipped slyly away from my grasp. It slammed back with full force into me, however, when a loud screeching and screaming sound filled the laboratory. I jumped to my feet, gasping slightly, but in full control of my emotions. I was not afraid.

'Don't me afraid,' Fraught told me, doubtlessly mistaking my expression of calm for terror and alarm, 'it is only Emil preparing a warm bath for you.'

'What a peculiar sound,' I murmured, settling back down on my stool.

'Ah, 'tis but our water-warming system, I'm afraid. A problem the fever king did not yet resolve, being too busy being all high and mighty all over the place.'

Emil in person, looking as though he was peering at the world through a thick and eye-stinging screen of smoke, appeared at the door. He was wrapped up in a tight white shirt, a white kerchief strangling him, a navy blue and gold jacket hanging loosely on the immense navy blue trousers that trailed to the floor and hid most of his feet, except for the up-turned curls of his pointy-ended, bright golden shoes. He had a long red and white squared dishcloth slung over his shoulder, and his hair hung in ridiculously tight curls around his lozenge-shaped face. A glimmering constellation of pimples was scattered over his face, powdering the yellowish white of his face with white-dotted red spots, like little yellow-peaked mountains.

'Little Miss' bath is ready,' he said, and his voice reminded me of someone else's voice I had already heard, so I closed my eyes to try and find out who this person's voice was without getting disturbed by the image of the man himself. The voice was really quite good. In fact, now that I came to think of it, it was a beautiful voice. I decided Emil was my friend, but only if he decided to do something with his hair and his little mountainous face.

'I also prepared the spare room, just like you ordered, sir. The fire's been lit, so the Little Miss should be very well, I reckon.'

'Fantaësie, my dearest girl, do go with Emil, he'll show you to the bathroom, I'm aware it's rather crowded and small, but I am not really familiar with company. As for the room, it'll probably smell a bit musty, like…like a cave, when the water's been resting dormant for some years and the wind hasn't kissed its surface all its life. I do hope you will forgive my disastrous hospitality. As you will have deduced by now, I am not really sociable man: too gregarious and taciturn by far, and absolutely unable to make my guests comfortable…'

I nodded in agreement.

'Well, away with you, Cartographer of Pain.'

I smiled at him, slid down from my stool and followed Emil out of the room and up the narrow corridor and staircase. Upstairs, I was met by a series of tall narrow doors, all painted in red with a big white flower in the middle, and at the very end of the line of doors, a small window, framed by yellow and green curtains. A little painting of a blond girl smelling an innocent rose in a bush, while a huge canorous flower was ready to eat her in her back hang between two doors, but Emil did not leave me any time to admire it:

'This way, little Miss,' he declared in his angel's voice, pointing with long ripped fingers to the furthest door down the corridor.

'Please. I would not want us to be mortal enemies. Don't call me by this offending title. Call me Cartographer,' I asked him graciously.

'Very well. As you wish, Little Miss Cartographer.'

He opened the door and I found myself in a fire-lit room that was so full of steam I could not make out the wall colours. I screwed up my eyes and drew back to have a better look, bumping straight into Emil, who'd followed me in the room.

'If Little Miss Cartographer will proceed into her bath,' he said.

'She will as soon as Little Miss Emil has rid her of his presence,' I retorted.

He frowned at me as though I had said the strangest thing in the Broken Glass Factory, but went out nonetheless, shutting the door behind him with a frightening lack of noise. I reached for the key and turned it in the lock, and then proceeded to bathe, wash my hair and don my clothes again. The smell of it came even worse due to the fact that my nostrils were filled with the perfume of violet-scented soap, but I still put the shirt and breeches on. With my boots and belts in my arms, I went out of the steam-filled bathroom, and bumped straight into Emil. Again.

'What?' was my gracious enquiry.

'Little Miss Cartographer is prayed to be lead to her chamber for the night, where she shall be served dinner.'

My chamber for the night was rather small, longer than it was large, and furnished with nothing more than a narrow bed under a thin narrow window screened by a sheet of pale metal, a small wooden table with two chairs, and many boxes stacked in the corners and covered in myriads of lit candles. A small fire burnt wetly in the chimney that stood facing the bed, and there was an immense portrait of a woman with empty eyes staring listlessly down from, for some reason, the ceiling. On the table stood a cluster of bowls and plates full of food, with a glass, a pitcher of some shimmering acid pink liquid and a bundle of forks, knives and spoons held together with an egg-patterned navy blue ribbon.

'When you are done with your dinner, Little Miss Cartographer, simply ring the bell yonder,' Emil pointed his horrid forefinger to a rusty bell hanging beside the bed, 'and I shall come and remove the cutlery and such.'

He executed a small bow, and went out, shutting the door behind him. As I was hungry, I went to the wooden table, sat down on one of the hard chairs and looked down on the food. In one bowl, there was a thick glaucous substance, mucus-like and steaming. In another there were apple-peelings coiled around the cooked and pink leg of some strange sickly animal. In a large plate decorated with tiny blue flowers stood a mountain of what looked like mashed turnip and raisins. In another, smaller plate was a pile of what looked like tiny, viscous blue-streaked mushrooms. The rest of the plates and bowls looked like nothing that I could compare with anything usually found in a _Strange Diseases Of South Or North_ book, let alone a cookbook.

When I was done clearing the plates and bowls form the repulsive-looking yet delicious meals, I rang the bell beside the bed. It made a strange, complaining, rusty sort of noise, and then Emil arrived. He piled up the plates, bowls and cutlery on a large iron tray, told me that Fraught had had a nightshirt prepared for me and that I could find it under the pillows, wished me a goodnight, and went out, shutting the door behind him.

1 _The Spider Symphony_

2 _The Ribbons Symphony_

3 _The Crow-Riders_

4 _The Child of Shadows_


End file.
